What Will Happen When Electric Vehicle Batteries End Their Life?

Electric vehicles with high potential and advantages will become as common as internal combustion engines in the next 10 years. But what happens when these vehicles run out of batteries? How will dead batteries be evaluated? What will the damage be like?

 

Electric vehicles

The electric vehicle has become the biggest transportation trend of our time. The whole world is in pursuit of producing new ideas and new models about electric vehicles. The world had foreseen their advantages before electric vehicles were produced. But he realized its disadvantages after it started production and presented it to the public.

In the summer of 2021, there were a lot of complaints about General Motors' electric vehicle Chevrolet Bolt in America. This vehicle, which has been sold since 2017, was considered a great victory against Tesla when it first came out. However, it seems that this victory was not permanent. Some users, who came to their house and left their vehicle to charge, realized that a fire broke out in the garage after a while. That was a warning for GM to take action. After the increase in such cases, the company started to work on detecting the problem by recalling some vehicles. The problem they faced was the battery problem, which is still not overcome for all electric vehicle manufacturers. After GM identified the problem, it recalled all vehicles so it could be repaired. But this time a bigger problem arose. What would happen to lithium-ion batteries in dangerous and unusable condition?

Electric vehicles have taken a big place in our lives in the last 10 years. In the media it was constantly compared with internal combustion engines. But the biggest problem people skip is what do we do with dead, dead or dangerous batteries like the example we gave above? Since batteries are chemical in nature, they can harm nature when they become waste. In this case, there is only one option left. Recycling electric vehicle batteries.

According to some researchers, currently produced batteries are not suitable for recycling. We can say that manufacturers and governments who are aware of this situation have taken action. China has introduced new rules aimed at promoting the reuse of battery components. Electric vehicle suppliers in European Union countries are responsible for ensuring that their products are not simply thrown away at the end of their useful life.

To give an example from manufacturers, Nissan uses end-of-life electric vehicle batteries in automated guided vehicles that distribute parts to workers at its factories. Volkswagen is doing the same thing. It also opened its first recycling facility in Salzgitter, Germany, and plans to recycle up to 3,600 battery systems per year in the pilot phase. On recycling, Thomas Tiedje, head of recycling planning at Volkswagen Group Components, said: “Many different materials are recovered as a result of the recycling process. "As a first step, we focus on cathode metals such as cobalt, nickel, lithium and manganese."

Generally, recyclers target high-priced metals such as cobalt and nickel. However, lithium and graphite are very dense in electric vehicle batteries. Therefore, we can compare accessing precious metals in a battery with searching for a needle in a haystack.