The world needs a firm policy about recycling the myriads of cells that make up electric vehicle batteries. That’s because there will be an estimated 30 million EV’s on our roads by 2030. Some of these will approaching the end of their useful lives. This could be a fresh challenge for society. How will all these EV batteries end their days?
Nobody Knows How EV Batteries Will End Their Days
The truth is beyond a vague affirmation we must dispose of them correctly, the world simply does not know. Which of these three things do you believe that little word ‘dispose’ means:
1… Bury them deep in landfills and cover them over?
2… Reduce them to atomic level and recover the materials?
3… Find second uses for them until we find a practical solution?
Our resounding vote is for the third answer. That’s because landfill is the last resort of failure, and atomic level technology is still in its infancy.
Baby Steps To Finding Second Uses for EV Batteries
There’s still a pile of energy remaining in EV batteries when they are too weak to power electric vehicles. Some may even still be going strong when it is time to recycle the vehicle they power. Paul Anderson from University of Birmingham told BBC he doubted we currently recover more than 5% of them globally.
However, there are some signs of hope from electric vehicle makers facing the possibility of dealing with the consequences later. Nissan is using old batteries to power driver-less delivery vehicles in its factories. Volkswagen has opened its first recycling plant in Salzgitter Germany. However, latest breaking news came from Suzuki Global on May 23, 2022.
The company announced a technology to reuse small lithium-ion batteries collected from EVs to power solar streetlights in Japan. This is still only a pilot project, but least there is progress. Suzuki pledges to open the technology to the public “as a product of Suzuki’s non-profitable activity to penetrate the technology”. We reuse their image in the spirit of promoting that vision.
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