Thanks for the reply, I hear your argument about VHS but I don't think it's in the same league, the reason being that neither VHS and Betamax were hampered by scarcity of materials nor cost of production. Batteries can have the same form factor, and they both take electricity as input and outputs, so there's no reason a non-cobalt cell would not be able to replace a cobalt cell AFAIK.
Faced with scarcity, and not being able to produce in volume battery manufacturers will be overwhelmingly tempted to try a different formula. Future supply of cobalt is uncertain, so there is a billion dollar incentive to try new methods.
In terms of miners, this is important because it then comes to a race between the time to start a new mine versus the time to reformulate a battery mix. They both take a long time and even though there is risk, that can be mitigated by testing.
