Got to love that talking about electric technology is some form of leftist argument. Anyway, thinking Hybrids are some form of efficient tech shows no idea of the engineering. The issue you have with a hybrid is that is carries two energy platforms, so they are naturally heavier than either single power platform. More weight and more complexity means more capital cost, maintenance and operational cost. This is why they dropped the idea in trains and ships and went for more direct drive diesels for efficiency or line fed electric. You have to remember Electric propulsion is just the drive, most new hybrids now are pure electric propulsion with its own little combustion engine electric generator and a set of batteries. With battery technology becoming lighter and more energy dense every year we are already at the point where pure electrics are getting close to the traditional range of similar sized petrol vehicles and are almost the same price as the hybrids that are only marginally cheaper to run than the old tech.
Recycling Li batteries is also 100% possible, is it cheap, no. It's the dismantling process that causes the problem mostly as it's time consuming, so most plants just melt it causing other problems. Now that the material costs are going up it is becoming more economic to strip and recover batteries which in turn means reuse of the components for new batteries etc...
As far as Li reserves there's plenty of the stuff, but not enough mining at present. As with oil, as it becomes more viable to mine they will find new reserves and ways to extract it, as it is fairly widespread, just in trace elements everywhere. That being said Li and Ni are not the only forms of battery under development and traditional acid batteries are being refined as well, which can be used for non weight sensitive applications like household and other uses. I mean you can generate electricity from a damn potato so there's a million avenues to research.