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What happens to used electric car batteries?

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Re: What happens to used electric car batteries?

#41

Post by exhilaration »

FuckButtons wrote: post #12
withinboredom wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don’t seem to have any issues stealing 600lb motorcycles

600lb motorcycles aren’t usually integrated internally into a several tone vehicle and mostly don’t discharge high voltage dc into anyone trying to steal them.

These are merely operational details. With some training and a little bit of Darwinian selection, I could easily see the same guys that mastered stealing catalytic converters in 2 minutes [1] shifting their focus to EV batteries. It might take them longer, say, 5 minutes, but the payoff is far higher.

[1] https://www.edmunds.com/auto-insurance/in-under-two-minutes-...

Re: What happens to used electric car batteries?

#42

Post by cogman10 »

jaclaz wrote: post #33

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 bat…

The question is how much material can be reclaimed from the battery.

Batteries are resource gold mines with most material readily available (the casing, for example, would be the easiest thing to recycle).

Further, simple recycling (burn everything) of the inner parts is almost certainly worth it just to reclaim the current contents of nickel and cobalt.

What's not clear is if other resources can be reclaimed or if this can be taken further. Can we also reclaim the electrolyte (The substance between the anode and cathode)? Can we do all this without smelting down parts?

That's the unknown. That's also what manufactures are saying when they say "we don't know if this will be more or less valuable in the future." Because, as you can imagine, if recycling is simply applying a chemical wash to the electrolyte and reusing everything else, then you've saved $1000s of dollars avoiding making a new battery.

If, on the other hand, that's not possible, then smelting will still happen as that reclaims expensive materials (primarily nickel and cobalt) at a fraction of the cost of mining them fresh.

In other words, we know how to recycle battery materials. We don't know if we can recycle all of the battery materials. As a result, battery manufactures are just waiting until the cost of manufacturing new batteries becomes cost prohibitive without starting a recycling plant.

Re: What happens to used electric car batteries?

#43

Post by cogman10 »

catlikesshrimp wrote: post #29

The question in the article title remains unanswered. The long article develops the question, only. As I see it, the batteries will end in landfills, best case. If you can pay for it, they will end in landfills abroad. Nobody who is relevant is serious about this problem because those batteries are still working. Consumers are sold the idea that the situation will improve in the future. Hopefully, I have to add. So m…

At a minimum, batteries contain large amount of steel, nickel, and cobalt which can all be extracted through simple smelting (Boil the metals).

Why would you throw that away? Those are valuable and expensive resources.

The question is entirely around if you can go further and recycle more of the inners and if you can do this without smelting down the whole battery.

I'm completely convinced these batteries won't end up in landfills. I'm less convinced that we won't get there without burning a bunch of silicon and lithium.

Re: What happens to used electric car batteries?

#44

Post by andrawesbahou »

jaclaz wrote: post #33

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 bat…

The $2000USD figure is approximately correct. We've run the numbers to be between $800-3200 depending on the weight of the battery, and how difficult it is to disassemble. 3200 for a 700kg Porsche Tycan battery.

(My cofounder and I launched a company to disassemble the batteries robotically, if you're interested in helping us build it, please message me).

Re: What happens to used electric car batteries?

#45

Post by andrawesbahou »

stubish wrote: post #23

Does recycled mean scrapping, or refurbishing for less strenuous use such as household or industrial power storage. I would think the lifespan of a car battery should be 20 years, with only 10 actually in a car.

Recycling in the case of a battery means shredding it, and reducing it into a so-called "black mass", a powder rich in cobalt and nickel. What I've seen is a lot of premature recycling, where batteries with about 70-80% of their state of health remaining get recycled, instead of reused. A promising way around this, is to re-use them in grid storage applications eg. coupled to a wind/solar farm. There, the cycling of battery charge is much less demanding than in a car. (shamelessly, we're starting a company to tackle just that issue, if anyone interested, message me)

Re: What happens to used electric car batteries?

#46

Post by andrawesbahou »

themitigating wrote: post #28
beloch wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such a law would kill structural batteries [1] in their infancy. That may or may not be a good thing. -------- [1] https://scitechdaily.com/big-breakthrough-for-massless-energ...

Couldn't they just cut it out like extracting part of a car frame? The goal is to get inside for the packs

No joke, cutting it out makes the batteries explode if they are not deeply discharged.

Re: What happens to used electric car batteries?

#47

Post by andrawesbahou »

russellbeattie wrote: post #4

We need legislation immediately which requires that all new batteries are designed and made to be disassembled for recycling both easily and cheaply. Do it now, while the industry is ramping up so the costs can be built into the system. Also, every battery that is produced should have a serial number on it. These are not things that can just be dumped in a hole and forgotten. The manufacturer of that battery should b…

It's going to be hard to push regulation to specifically make it easier to dissassemble them. However, regulation that makes the manufacturer responsible throughout the life of the battery (and beyond the vehicle's warranty period) should be possible, and would force the manufacturer into designing-for-recycling. Disclaimer: I'm affiliated, as a founder, with a company building robots to disassemble car batteries semi-automatically.

Re: What happens to used electric car batteries?

#48

Post by andrawesbahou »

catlikesshrimp wrote: post #29

The question in the article title remains unanswered. The long article develops the question, only. As I see it, the batteries will end in landfills, best case. If you can pay for it, they will end in landfills abroad. Nobody who is relevant is serious about this problem because those batteries are still working. Consumers are sold the idea that the situation will improve in the future. Hopefully, I have to add. So m…

It's unlikely they will end up in a landfill. A completely spent battery has cobalt, nickel, manganese, lithium, copper and steel which can fetch around $1500 on average. The trick is in how cheaply you can extract those. (The main cost drivers are battery logistics cost, and battery disassembly costs). Fun fact: Spent batteries are categorized as "Hazardous Waste", and need to be transported in explosion-proof containers, with special licenses, and the police needs to be informed of the exact routes that are travelled.

Bias Disclaimer: I'm working at a company (founder) where we build robots to automatically disassemble the batteries and avoid logistics costs.

Re: What happens to used electric car batteries?

#50

Post by tzs »

For old EV batteries where the only reason they need replacement is reduced capacity I wonder if they might be useful in some stationary applications? I'd love to have a whole-house battery backup system for the occasional power outage, but systems with new batteries are too expensive.

An 80 kWh battery, say, that has lost half its capacity would have been enough to get me through most outages I've seen since moving into my current house 15 years ago without me having to even try to reduce power during the outage. The one or two outages where that would not have been enough, it would have been sufficient to just dress warmer, turn the thermostat down a little, and avoid doing laundry.

I'd be interested in this as long as the price per kWh of the degraded battery is significantly lower than the price for a new battery with the same capacity. The degraded battery is going to be good for much less cycles than a new battery of the same capacity, so it should cost less.

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