@Exceller ....."While the scarcity and margins for copper may...

@Exceller ....."While the scarcity and margins for copper may make this feasible, the energy requirements are quite ridiculous."

Indeed the energy requirements are incredibly high, but that is the cost of a renewable energy future.
The world's need for minerals like copper, nickel, lithium, aluminium, glass, etc, etc, goes through the roof to create a renewable future. The energy cost of 1kw of solar panels is around the 4200kwh mark I've found from various sources. Yes it will give multiples of that back over it's life, but the energy cost is up front.
There is plenty of solar energy in the Atacama desert, and good height to run pumped hydro sea water up into the mountains there, so it is possible they could produce their own power.

These are the types of things that need to be done before FFs become too expensive to do them. When, not if all FFs become much more expensive to bring out of the ground, then the cost of renewables will go up greatly. Already we have extracted all the cheapest to get conventional oil, with the newer oil resources being much more expensive to extract, eg tight oil, deep sea, oil shale sands etc. We will increasingly see this at the petrol pumps as the oil price rises over the longer term.
For me the biggest catalyst for EVs will be the increasing price of oil, and I suspect that is what all the car manufacturers are working on as well. Oil has been lower in price for longer than many of us predicted, which IMHO is one of, if not the main reason for the slower than expected uptake of EVs, compared to our thoughts a few years ago.

All the arguments of EVs being bigger polluters using coal power will be irrelevant to the masses as they will just go for the cheaper option, especially if there are financing terms to buy the EV that work out cheaper than an ICEV over 5-10 years.
All vehicles are energy hogs, there is no way around it, and we all like to use them.

There is no way around the future, we either spend our existing FF heritage on building a renewable future, or we continue to waste it and eventually send civilization back to the stone age. The harsh reality for the climate, is that we need to burn more FF to create enough renewables to take over from FF before the climate can be repaired.
It will be very difficult for any politician over the next week or so to say the climate is not changing here in Australia!!
Sorry for the long rant.