$1 Party, page-18

One Chinese car manufacturer is looking sell cars without the battery and then lease the battery separately. the object being to reduce the on board cost by $8k battery cost .& reduce consumer anxiety about battery quality/ life / range

In tandem with this strategy is to thrift cobalt in the batteries and compensate the disadvantage by setting up permanent charge stations were the battery which is by design removable is exchanged with an already charged battery . The process is now in a pilot with banks of charged batteries available to be exchanged in a drive through service bay arrangement .

All seems capital intensive to me and does not outweigh the utility of Co in battery design. as you note but it can't be denied that a push to thrift/ replace cobalt is universal and may eventually alter Co economics .