What happens to used electric car batteries?

I think the big bussiness opportunity is bankruptcy.

Lease some land, build a cheap warehouse, stock batteries for profit. Go bankrupt

Put batteries in a ship, dump them in international waters. Go bankrupt.

Sell them abroad as "refurbished" stock. Go bankrupt. This one actually works for expired batteries, you can buy them on ebay.

I see this as very relevant:

>In Oklahoma City, the batteries in the SNT warehouse mostly came from cars that are still under warranty, which means the automakers are responsible for them. Tyler Helps, the company’s head of business development, says automakers are paying SNT to keep their old batteries because they don’t know what the used battery market is going to look like and whether the materials inside the battery might be more valuable in the future. “So instead of the automakers saying, ‘I'm going to go and dispose of those materials,’ they say, ‘I’m just going to hold onto it,’” he says.

I am not convinced of the analysis, it is more likely that the car makers know that the cost of disposing properly (and in large volumes) such batteries today would be astronomical (let's say - only for the sake of reasoning - US$ 2,000 per car) and prefer to pay (say) US$ 50/year to SNT and postpone the problem by - still say - 10 or 20 years (and most probably they already charged you, inside the price of your new electric vehicle, some US$ 3,000, to stay on the safe side)

In a nutshell, you don't want right now to actually own an electric car past its warranty, you'd be better served by long renting or similar, as there is a concrete risk that if/when your batteries die, there won't be (yet) an effective way to get rid of them cleanly and you may have to pay a non-trivial amount of money for disposing of the battery.

Additionally, it seems to me like this opens a (large) can of worms when it comes to used vehicles.

Will there be specialized technicians/organizations that will give you some form of warranty on the batteries?

At least for the purpose of recycling, where it is ok to destroy any part of the housing, batteries are very recycling friendly, as they are made of modular cells.

It will happen the same what is happening with used tires in some countries. Stockpile tires, gather millions of them and let them burn. There is no way to extinguish such fire. So now batteries are stacked in piles, hundreds gathered together in one place. Another fire that can’t be extinguished. Battery problem is solved! I really don’t believe about rising value of used batteries in the future. The future recycling process will be designed for future more recycle able batteries and not current toxic waste.

Are EVs worse for the environment than ICE cars?

Let me check with some experts, okay, no they're not.

But what if they burn coal in the electric plant?

Well, we shouldn't do that but still, mildly surprisingly until you think about it, no, still better.

But what about when we run out of rare earths?

They're not rare, so that's not a problem.

I didn't mean run out, I know they're not rare, I meant what about the pollution and the foreigners owning them all?

Did I mention they weren't rare? They don't own them all, they just make them at the moment because we moved a lot of extraction and manufacturing there to take advantage of their low wages and lax labor and environmental laws.

Hah, so you admit that EVs are worse than ICE vehicles!

No, see my first answer.

But if mining stuff is bad and you need to mine stuff for EVs then EVs are bad, and we shouldn't shift to them. QED

Is that seriously your argument?

Okay, never mind that, but what about this warehouse that has hundreds (yeah, not simply dozens but hundreds, with an h!) of batteries in it. Isn't that conclusive proof that climate change was just a hoax by communists to take over the world?

No?

Hah, no-one really believed that, we just really hate regulations so pretended to believe that.

You seem very concerned about pollution and recycling for someone who doesn't like regulation.

No, it's okay we're lying about that too.