Although it is common. Lithium is not abundant in high concentrations which makes it difficult to mine. A resourse base of 2% is considered valuable. The reason there is not a spot price is, for a spot price to exsists there must be available surplus to contract resourses available for the open market, which there is not. It is not economically viable to recycle as for instance a phone battery contains approximately 50c of lithium. As you say demand is similar to cobalt , and cobalt is an integral part of lithium batteries. The difference is cobalt can be a biproduct whereas lithium must be sourced through salars ( lithium brine) or mining ( lithium carbonate hard rock). Obviously like all resourse booms, there is exponential growth in all sectors especially exploration, depending on the duration of growth in the sector on Australian shores before the South Americans take hold there could be a lot of speculators left holding their drill rods. Just my two cents.
