If you read the story about that “$17.33 a gallon” - and the underlying hit piece - you’ll see how laughable it is. For example, 1/2 of that $17.33 cost is the credit ICE vehicle manufacturers must purchase because their cars don’t meet CAFE standards. They also use a bogus assumption of a BEV lasting only 10 years and 120k miles.
Then they play a bit of a shell game with “high demand” kwh rates which are charged to commercial and industrial customers but not residential customers. They factor that uncharged high demand rate of $15/kwh into the $17.33 number.
https://phys.org/news/2023-08-evidence-mcdermitt-caldera-largest-lithium.html