BERLIN: Recycling electric car batteries is the key to making these vehicles greener, but what seems an obvious road to take is being hampered by a lack of raw materials and coordination, reports the German auto trade magazine Automobilwoche.
Unfortunately a solution is not near at hand, say experts who blame a lack of standards, making recycling too complex. They also say there are not yet enough discarded electric cars to provide the reusable batteries needed.
The Berlin-based Öko-Institut estimates the amount of batteries in circulation in electric cars at around 100,000 tonnes per year. In 10 years, the figure will stand at 1 million tonnes.
These batteries can provide up to 80% of their original capacity when repurposed and the current industry focus is on decreasing costs and increasing recycling yields.
Compared to these targets, the recycling plans of the big car manufacturers sound very modest. Volkswagen has been testing processes at its Salzgitter plant for two years and wants to target annual recycling capacities of 1,500 tonnes there.
And Mercedes-Benz, together with the battery recycler Primobius, is currently building a factory in Kuppenheim in Baden-Wuerttemberg with a capacity of 2,500 tonnes. The foundation stone was recently laid.
Since the batteries currently installed in electric cars will still be in use for some time, manufacturers do not expect a larger number of returns until the end of the decade. Moreover, these batteries will first be given a second life as stationary power storage units.
Until the batteries from regular production vehicles have finally reached their end of life, batteries from test vehicles and prototypes will be recycled. Recycling companies outside the car industry are also slowly increasing their capacities.
There are also other obstacles to be overcome. "At the moment, batteries are anything but designed to be recycling-friendly," physicist Kai Peter Birke told the magazine. He conducts research on battery recycling at the University of Stuttgart and the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation.
A lack of standardisation also prevents mass disassembly, since the design of battery cells varies between manufacturers. The great challenge for the future is to automate such a process. Mercedes wants to start this this year, at least as far as disassembly is concerned.
