What happens to car batteries at end of life?

As we established in previous articles, the “breakeven” from a carbon perspective for an electric vehicle, including the carbon generated in mining and manufacturing, is around 7 years. In other words, after seven years an EV is helping reduce carbon emissions versus a traditional internal combustion engine car.

The argument seems to have shifted, and there are now questions around about what happens to EV batteries at the end of their life, presumably initiated by the anti-climate change lobby. Setting aside their motives ($) it’s a reasonable question to ask. Here we outlay some of the answers.

Rechargeable car batteries from hybrid and electric vehicles (EVs) go through a structured end-of-life process. What happens depends on the battery chemistry and its remaining capacity, but the goal is almost always to reuse, repurpose, or recycle rather, (in a cascading) process than discard.

Assessment and Removal

When a battery no longer meets vehicle performance requirements (often around 70–80% of original capacity), it is removed by a trained technician, and tested to determine the remaining capacity, the cell general health and safety (thermal or structural damage).

At this point, the battery is considered end of life for automotive use, not necessarily end of life overall.

Second-Life Uses

Many EV batteries are repurposed before recycling, and can be used for a variety of purposes, including home battery systems, grid balancing and peak shaving and backup power for buildings. They can also be used for renewable energy storage, in applications such as solar or wind energy bufferingand Industrial or telecom backup systems.

These “second life” applications can extend battery usefulness by 5–10 additional years.

Eventually, batteries are then recycled to recover valuable materials.

Recycling Process for Lithium-ion batteries (EVs and hybrids)

Recycling is complex and evolving but includes discharge & dismantling - batteries are fully discharged for safety and the modules and cells are separated. Materials are then recovered.

Valuable metals - Lithium, Cobalt, Nickel, Copper, Aluminium – are extracted using methods such as Mechanical shredding, Pyrometallurgy (high heat) and Hydrometallurgy (chemical extraction).

Having been recovered and refined, these materials are then reused in new batteries.

Ultimate disposal.

Once the initial batteries have lived through cycles of use, reuse and ultimate recovery (which can be a 30-year cycle) their useful life is exhausted and they are disposed of in a regulated fashion, in landfill under strict environmental and safety regulations, and whereby only non-recoverable residues may be disposed of.

Environmental Impact

Proper end-of-life handling reduces mining demand, prevents toxic leakage and cuts carbon footprint of new batteries.