… is now one of the most valuable privately-held battery companies:
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Well, I hope a battery supplier is on the hook for eventually recycling old batteries.
From what I’ve read, most car makers have 1 or 2 recycling plants to their name for EV batteries.
One article here shows Redwood(owned by/partnered with Tesla) is trying to gather household LiOn batteries in the hopes of being able to recycle them into EV batteries.
Surely it would be easier to recycle EV batteries first before trying to recycle small cell household lithium ion batteries.
As far as I have heard, it is currently not economical to recycle EV batteries.
From the 1st article, if you even bothered to read it:
How it works: Lithium-ion batteries contain varying amounts of critical minerals such as cobalt, copper, nickel and lithium — metals that can be recycled almost infinitely.
- Since the metals don’t change or degrade, old devices can become new EVs without any performance or battery life tradeoffs, according to Redwood CEO J.B. Straubel, a co-founder of Tesla.
Yes, but: Less than 5% of rechargeable batteries in devices such as cell phones, laptops, e-bikes, e-scooters, electric toothbrushes, vacuum cleaners and power drills get recycled today — mostly because it’s just not easy to do.
The bottom line: Redwood and Audi are trying to make recycling a whole lot easier, which could limit the need for mining, increase domestic manufacturing and make EVs cheaper — and more sustainable.
Basically, they are trying to make it easier, and thus cheaper, in the long run to recycle those small appliance batteries. Trying to normalize recycling anything is a good thing, right?
It is doable right now and many companies are devoted to doing it. Whether or not it’s economical depends on how you look at it.
Economics of scale will bring prices down in the long run- kind of like how we aren’t paying $5000 for a 4k OLED TV today. Other things, like reusing/recycling/repurposing those super expensive rare earth minerals, will reduce those “ecological disasters” of digging up said minerals.
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They’re trying, there’s planning, there’s talking, there’s promising, and there’s now. Are EV batteries being recycled now? Everything I’ve heard so far says no. At least not at any significant scale. It’s cheaper to mine new materials.
So all of those videos out there showing EV batteries actually being recycled and talking about how they are repurposed is basically just propaganda films from the EV community?
All of the companies out there dedicated to recycling EV batteries are just some front for the government to launder money?
I think they’re planning on the future when the cost of lithium will increase to the point where it will be cost effective to recycle lithium ion electric vehicle batteries.
Currently they’re stock piling used scrap EV batteries and recycling a small number of scap EV batteries that exist at a loss. In the next 5 to 10 years the amount of EV battery scrap will huge compared to today.
I know. One of the articles I posted said 5% of cell phone and the smaller batteries, his article says 5% as well, but they don’t mention the smaller batteries part. Hell, the more I read on in the article, the more I’m certain he only skimmed it to find bits and pieces that supported his fantasy, but it also contradicts what he’s saying at the same time.
The BBC article even says Nissan is using old Leaf batteries to power the trolleys that bring the parts to the vehicle assembly lines- which is what I referred to as “recycling and repurposing”
It also states that VW’s first EV recycling plant in Germany has plans to recycle about 3600 EV batteries per year. It does not mention if it currently sends their batteries to other EV battery recycling plants such as Redwood, which is partnered with Tesla. Renault doesn’t sell many EVs but is recycling all of THEIR EV batteries.
Renault, meanwhile, is now recycling all its electric car batteries - although as things stand, that only amounts to a couple of hundred a year. It does this through a consortium with French waste management company Veolia and Belgian chemical firm Solvay.“We are aiming at being able to address 25% of the recycling market. We want to maintain this level of coverage, and of course this would cover by far the needs of Renault,” says Jean-Philippe Hermine, Renault’s VP for strategic environmental planning.
“It’s a very open project - it’s not to recycle only Renault batteries but all batteries, and also including production waste from the battery manufacturing plants.”
The issue is also receiving attention from scientific bodies such as the Faraday Institution, whose ReLiB project aims to optimise the recycling of EV batteries and make it as streamlined as possible.“We imagine a more efficient, more cost-effective industry in future, instead of going through some of the processes that are available - and can be scaled up now - but are not terribly efficient,” says Dr Anderson, who is principal investigator for the project.
Currently, for example, much of the substance of a battery is reduced during the recycling process to what is called black mass - a mixture of lithium, manganese, cobalt and nickel - which needs further, energy-intensive processing to recover the materials in a usable form.
It then goes on to talk about the scarcity of some of the materials in the EU/UK and how recycling needs to become more widespread over there- another point I brought up. And how things can eventually become more efficient on a larger scale- economics of scale.
So, in an almost round about way, he proved my points correct by posting an article he thought was proving him right. From a lot of his other posts I can tell he’s not the sharpest bulb in the crayon shed.
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Of course! 
Anything and everything that someone can’t quite comprehend just HAS to be some sort of conspiracy–even when no actual evidence of any kind of conspiracy exists.
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EV’s seem like a big boulder rolling down a hill. That’s going to hit your ice car. Biden wants to have charging stations every 50 miles on the interstate. The wait lines there should be fun. Or not. 90% of driving is 20 miles from your home. Let’s figure that out first.
That is true for me, but I can’t speak for anyone else. Because almost all of my driving is well-within my plug-in hybrid’s current 47 mile battery-only range, I do all of my recharging in my own garage. But, when I take a vacation trip this coming summer, I will be looking for places to recharge. It seems that more and more hotels are beginning to feature free charging stations for their guests, so I will make that amenity a priority when searching online for hotels.
Top 5 Hotels With EV Charging (2022 Update) - 4Front Energy.
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Plug in hybrid? You have a gas motor? There’s ur range.
My ultimate range on the highway is ~500 miles, but I normally only use the gas engine about once every 2 weeks, when I run it for 20-30 minutes–at expressway speeds.
I manually switch from EV mode to HV mode before getting onto the expressway, and then I manually switch back to EV mode when I exit to local roads. There is also a setting for automatic switching between EV and HV, but the manual advises that this will decrease the battery range more than if the driver manually chooses HV-only on the highway.
There seems to be a problem with EV battery recycling NOW. But what about 10 years from now? I’ve stated several times in this forum, that I personally know of at least 4 companies in the Boston area that are working on NEW Battery technologies. There are dozens of more in the US and probably hundreds more around the world. Hedge Fund companies are putting BILLIONS into this. They know that a new type of battery that can charge fast, has a longer life and can be made environmentally friendly is a game changer.
You can find some of these technologies with a simple Google search. But there are many that are very early in development and the companies are very secretive. I know of one company like that. One of the engineers went to school with my daughter at MIT. I have no idea what the technology is (very hush hush). But they seem to have something because they got a huge infusion of money from a Hedge Fund last year.
The thing with charging stations is that they don’t have to be limited the same way gas stations are. They can be just about everywhere businesses want to install them.
Those charging stations every 50 miles could be at malls, supermarkets, diners, schools, apartment complexes, highway/freeway rest stops or even just a random collection of chargers. There is no huge hole in the ground to dig for EPA approved storage tanks that hold X amount of liquid, and the most digging that would need to be done for EV chargers is to bury the wires underground to run the higher voltage lines to the chargers.
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