There is a recent report from the Washington Post with a scary title: “EV Battery Recycling Has Boomed Too Soon.” There aren’t enough used electric vehicle batteries to meet even 10% of the raw material demand for electric vehicles made in the US, the Washington Post says.
Meanwhile, the US already has more battery recycling capacity than it has batteries available to recycle, with more public and private battery recycling facilities planned or under construction. The Post concludes its report with this pithy statement: “Many of these investments are destined to fail. Those few that succeed will do so only by diversifying away from recycling, at least temporarily.”
Currently, defective batteries that go directly from manufacturing to the scrap heap account for about three-quarters of batteries recycled in US and global battery plants. That percentage will decline as battery manufacturing technology improves, leaving less scrap available for recycling.
Source: CleanTechnica: Read The Article
PSR Analysis: Those batteries last a long time (up to 0.5 million miles according to Elon Musk) and when they are no longer suitable for their original purpose, they have a second life and can be used for grid-scale energy storage or sold to EV owners who need to replace their batteries but don’t want to pay for a new one and are willing to accept shorter range and lower performance in order to save some money. However, companies like Redwood Materials, a leading battery recycling company, will undoubtably have taken this into account. PSR
Guy Youngs is Forecast & Adoption Lead at Power Systems Research
