What will likely ensure that used battery packs aren't just tossed into the ground is the valuable metals inside: lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese, aluminum. The challenge of reuse is particularly difficult because new cells are dramatically cheaper now, to the point that it's no longer clear there's a business model in buying, transporting, repurposing, and reselling used cells from older battery packs. Sure, automakers installed early demonstration projects, and some energy-storage installations are now live in various countries, but potential customers for on-site energy storage largely continue to prefer fresh new cells over a motley array of used EV packs with unknown usage and duty cycles (basically, the wear and tear of driving). This hasn't happened at any scale, though. It's long been thought that a robust "second use" industry might spring up to buy and repurpose used packs, extending their lives by another 10 years or more. Even with a quarter or more of peak capacity gone, aging battery packs still offer plenty of energy storage-20-to-90 kilowatt-hours, or up to three days' worth of electricity for the average American home. Hitting this mark may take 10 years or more. Is There a Second Life for Used EV Batteries?Īn EV battery pack is assumed to be at the end of its life when it has no more than 70 to 75 percent of its original capacity. Department of Energy even gave Redwood a $2 billion loan to build out its Nevada factory. The company has set up programs with auto-recycler trade groups and automakers, including Ford and Volkswagen, to boost its supply of used cells to feed into its grinders and purifiers. Straubel's decision to focus on supplying battery minerals spurred an investment race, and more than a dozen venture-funded startups or corporate entities have emerged in various parts of the battery-recycling industry.Ĭurrently, Redwood's biggest challenge is procuring a sufficient number of EV batteries to recycle. Redwood Materials is now headquartered in Carson City, Nevada, not far from Tesla's battery-manufacturing facility in the Reno area. JB Straubel, one of the earliest employees at Tesla (and also the automaker's former chief technology officer), raised hundreds of millions of dollars of venture capital when he announced the launch of a battery-recycling and -supply startup. In 2017, a Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur with extensive experience in auto startups launched his own company to scale up battery collection and recycling. EVs are distinctive, though, thanks to their battery metals. Recycling goods is big business across many industries, and the automobile business is no exception, with metals such as steel and aluminum-which make up much of a car's body-typically getting recycled at the end of a vehicle's service life. The cells are ground up, the resulting stream is purified in various ways, and the end of the process is a pure supply of the desired metals. They’re the most expensive part of the complete battery pack when new, and the prize is their lithium, cobalt, manganese, nickel, and, to a lesser extent, aluminum. It’s the cells themselves that hold the most allure. The plastics may not be recyclable, but they’re a small proportion of the total contents of an EV battery pack. Certain parts are easy: steel, copper, and aluminum scrap metal usually go into the nationwide metals-recycling stream. The packs are shipped to a facility specializing in battery disassembly and recycling their components. While EV batteries hold 20 to 100 times more energy than those used by hybrids, they're recycled pretty much the same way as the smaller ones. Toyota's program is arguably the most notable, given that the automaker has sold the bulk of hybrid vehicles in the U.S. Dealerships also dispose of used hybrid packs responsibly, relying on collection programs set up by automakers, which send these batteries to those same recyclers to undergo the same dismantling procedures.
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