As the automotive industry has sought to rapidly decarbonise, developing the advanced battery technology on which electric vehicles (EVs) rely has understandably become an area of intense investment and innovation.
And there have been many reasons to think that EV batteries would – after a car reaches the end of its intended life – have significant positive value. As well as being state-of-the-art technology, the average EV battery contains relatively large volumes of sought-after metals, including lithium, cobalt, and nickel.
However, as with many new ventures, a significant amount of investment – both in terms of finances and time - needs to be done upfront, before all the benefits start to come into play.
When a battery arrives at a recycling facility – and has been expertly discharged to remove any remaining voltage – it must be carefully disassembled, a process that takes significant time due to the many different materials and designs used by EV battery manufacturers.
It is then shredded to create a substance called black mass which contains a blend of the valuable rare earth metals and a host of other materials and chemicals.
As the market has begun to mature, it has become clear that there will need to be a range of refiners on hand to cater to the wide and growing variety of battery types and chemistries on the market.
While the industry waits for these refiners to be commercially viable solutions– a process which includes overcoming challenges such as getting the right licences in place, perfecting their processes, and building up to run at a commercial scale – the overall value of a recycled battery is likely to fluctuate wildly. It is therefore highly unlikely that there will be a stable positive value for end-of-life EV batteries in the short or medium term.
And, once black mass is being refined in large quantities, manufacturers need to be able to utilise these recycled materials within their supply chain for there to be any chance of there being a positive value for these end-of-life battery units in the long term.
Even getting to this point will require years of further research, investment, and innovation by recyclers such as EMR and their partners. And if, in the years ahead, battery manufacturers switch away from using lithium to cheaper, more abundant substances - such as sodium, calcium or zinc - the economics of battery recycling would be disrupted further.
If this provides a reality check for the industry, it also provides a path forward.
Firstly, in keeping with the ethos of the RECOVAS consortium (which includes – among others – EMR, Jaguar Land Rover, Bentley, and BMW), there must be a focus on repairing and reusing batteries in the next generation of vehicles. Where this isn’t possible, many batteries can still be remanufactured for use in the energy storage sector, which has been an area of research for RECOVAS partner, Connected Energy.
Under this model, recycling becomes the last resort, only to be explored where reuse and remanufacturing is impossible.
And, here too, closer collaboration with the automotive industry offers the opportunity to increase the efficiency and sustainability of the recycling process – and boost the chances of extracting positive value from end-of-life EV batteries.
Simpler, easy-to-disassemble battery designs will cut one of the significant costs of recycling while more openness and standardisation in battery chemistry will make refining and reusing the valuable metals in black mass more streamlined.
The will is clearly there. For EMR – which has been leading the way in the recycling of vehicles with internal combustion engines for many years – leading the transition to recycling EVs is the natural next step. Similarly, the EU Battery Directive makes it clear that car makers have the ultimate responsibility for disposing of and recycling these batteries in a sustainable way.
Reducing the negative value of recycling EV batteries – and searching for ways to give them a stable positive value – is a mission the whole sector therefore wants to achieve,and EMR is playing a key role in accomplishing that.
