The problem with EV battery disposal is mostly that there isn’t enough used batteries for companies to want to be involved in recycling them.
Part of that is because, unlike your claim, in a lot of cases they’re having perfectly long long service lives, even exceeding what we thought their lifespans might be (there are exceptions of course, like the early Nissan leafs)
And then other sources of used batteries, like from crashed vehicles, are being being reused more-or-less as-is for things like storage for solar power and home backups, which is preferable to recycling when possible
Eventually we’ll probably hit a critical mass of used batteries full of valuable lithium and such that companies will be clamoring over themselves to start recycling them, and maybe at some point we’ll even reach a point where no more lithium needs to be mined and we’ll be recovering all we need from dead batteries. Basically the whole battery can be recycled these days, its just a matter of building out the infrastructure to do it, and once there are enough batteries waiting to be recycled, someone will see dollar signs and step up to that plate.
The problem with EV battery disposal is mostly that there isn’t enough used batteries for companies to want to be involved in recycling them.
Part of that is because, unlike your claim, in a lot of cases they’re having perfectly long long service lives, even exceeding what we thought their lifespans might be (there are exceptions of course, like the early Nissan leafs)
And then other sources of used batteries, like from crashed vehicles, are being being reused more-or-less as-is for things like storage for solar power and home backups, which is preferable to recycling when possible
Eventually we’ll probably hit a critical mass of used batteries full of valuable lithium and such that companies will be clamoring over themselves to start recycling them, and maybe at some point we’ll even reach a point where no more lithium needs to be mined and we’ll be recovering all we need from dead batteries. Basically the whole battery can be recycled these days, its just a matter of building out the infrastructure to do it, and once there are enough batteries waiting to be recycled, someone will see dollar signs and step up to that plate.
I’ll be glad when all that happens.