The reality of salvaging recyclable rare earths and even cobalt from old car batteries is more a myth than a reality. And the problem is that so many of those “old batteries” aren’t old. What to do with batteries abandoned to junk yards or even into the available car battery recycling plants is the sheer volume and the uneconomic costs of the recycling process. Writing from London and Detroit for the March 20th Reuters, writers Nick Carey, Paul Lienert and Sarah McFarlane lay it on the line:
“For many electric vehicles, there is no way to repair or assess even slightly damaged battery packs after accidents, forcing insurance companies to write off cars with few miles - leading to higher premiums and undercutting gains from going electric… And now those battery packs are piling up in scrapyards in some countries, a previously unreported and expensive gap in what was supposed to be a [recycling] ‘circular economy.’… ‘We're buying electric cars for sustainability reasons,’ said Matthew Avery, research director at automotive risk intelligence company Thatcham Research. ‘But an EV isn't very sustainable if you've got to throw the battery away after a minor collision.’
“Battery packs can cost tens of thousands of dollars and represent up to 50% of an EV's price tag, often making it uneconomical to replace them… While some automakers like Ford Motor Co and General Motors Co said they have made battery packs easier to repair, Tesla Inc has taken the opposite tack with its Texas-built Model Y, whose new structural battery pack has been described by experts as having ‘zero repairability.’… Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.
“A Reuters search of EV salvage sales in the U.S. and Europe shows a large portion of low-mileage Teslas, but also models from Nissan Motor Co, Hyundai Motor Co, Stellantis, BMW, Renault and others… EVs constitute only a fraction of vehicles on the road, making industry-wide data hard to come by, but the trend of low-mileage zero-emission cars being written off with minor damage is growing. Tesla's decision to make battery packs ‘structural’ - part of the car's body - has allowed it to cut production costs but risks pushing those costs back to consumers and insurers.
“Tesla has not referred to any problems with insurers writing off its vehicles. But in January CEO Elon Musk said premiums from third-party insurance companies ‘in some cases were unreasonably high.’… Unless Tesla and other carmakers produce more easily repairable battery packs and provide third-party access to battery cell data, already-high insurance premiums will keep rising as EV sales grow and more low-mileage cars get scrapped after collisions, insurers and industry experts said.
“‘The number of cases is going to increase, so the handling of batteries is a crucial point,’ said Christoph Lauterwasser, managing director of the Allianz Center for Technology, a research institute owned by Allianz… Lauterwasser noted EV battery production emits far more CO2 than fossil-fuel models, meaning EVs must be driven for thousands of miles before they offset those extra emissions… ‘If you throw away the vehicle at an early stage, you've lost pretty much all advantage in terms of CO2 emissions,’ he said.”
The minerals that go into EV batteries are plagued with issues. Cobalt, which fortunately is the most economically viable mineral to recycle from discarded batteries, comes with a severely checkered reality: “Extractive industries have earned a reputation for frequently violating human rights and degrading the environment. Cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country with 70 percent of the world’s existing cobalt production and more than 50 percent of cobalt reserves, has well-documented negative impacts on the environment, community health, and human rights.” Report from the Union of Concerned Scientists, February 11, 2021.
Rare earths are being discovered in in unexpected quantities, such as the lithium treasure trove in and around the Salton Sea in California’s Imperial Valley, but so far the economies of extracting that mineral in a recycling process are still too expensive to justify the effort. This, combined with the usual “totaling” of damaged EV vehicles, is a serious problem that must be solved. “Sandy Munro, head of Michigan-based Munro & Associates, which tears down vehicles and advises automakers on how to improve them, said the Model Y battery pack has ‘zero repairability.’… ‘A Tesla structural battery pack is going straight to the grinder,’ Munro said…
“At Synetiq, the UK's largest salvage company, head of operations Michael Hill said over the last 12 months the number of EVs in the isolation bay – where they must be checked to avoid fire risk - at the firm's Doncaster yard has soared, from perhaps a dozen every three days to up to 20 per day… ‘We've seen a really big shift and it's across all manufacturers,’ Hill said.
“The UK currently has no EV battery recycling facilities, so Synetiq has to remove the batteries from written-off cars and store them in containers. Hill estimated at least 95% of the cells in the hundreds of EV battery packs - and thousands of hybrid battery packs - Synetiq has stored at Doncaster are undamaged and should be reused.
“It already costs more to insure most EVs than traditional cars… According to online brokerage Policygenius, the average U.S. monthly EV insurance payment in 2023 is $206, 27% more than for a combustion-engine model… According to Bankrate, an online publisher of financial content, U.S. insurers know that ‘if even a minor accident results in damage to the battery pack ... the cost to replace this key component may exceed $15,000.’
“A replacement battery for a Tesla Model 3 can cost up to $20,000, for a vehicle that retails at around $43,000 but depreciates quickly over time… Andy Keane, UK commercial motor product manager at French insurer AXA, said expensive replacement batteries ‘may sometimes make replacing a battery unfeasible.’” Reuters. This is a giant fly in what is supposed to be one giant necessity in the battle to contain climate change.
I’m Peter Dekom, and recycling minerals from abandoned EV batteries, finding ways to improve the structural integrity of EV battery grids, are essential technologies that must be vastly improved in the immediate future to take that one giant automotive step towards cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
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