Tesla’s former CTO is building a giant lithium-ion battery recycling operation

Re:Tesla’s former CTO is building a giant lithium-ion batter... by shajznnckfke on Saturday August 29, 2020 @04:00PM (#24318986)

Maybe Apple could be given a choice here: user-replaceable battery with a refundable core charge, or they have to build a battery recycling program with the same sort of core charge applied at purchase.

The core charge would be returned if the user sells the phone to any legit business (funded by the core charge originally paid to Apple). If the user sells the phone on eBay, the buyer can recover the core charge later, so it’s part of the market value of any phone that has a battery in it.

The charge also could be recovered if the phone is given to a recycling center. It’s on Apple to figure out how to get the batteries out and pay whoever does that work. Apple can decide whether to do the engineering to make the battery replaceable up front, or fund the delicate labor of taking apart the phone later.

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Re:Tesla’s former CTO is building a giant lithium-ion batter... by chrisseaton on Saturday August 29, 2020 @05:50PM (#24319671)

> or they have to build a battery recycling program with the same sort of core charge applied at purchase

They will already recycle your battery for free. I think they will actually also recycle other manufacturers' batteries for free as well, and also any random loose batteries you hand them.

Seems pretty reasonable to me?

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Re:Tesla’s former CTO is building a giant lithium-ion batter... by shajznnckfke on Saturday August 29, 2020 @06:07PM (#24319757)

I think the missing piece here is the core charge, which makes the average user think of the battery as something of value that shouldn’t just be thrown in the trash. Currently, I think a lot of users with an obsolete phone with a smashed screen would just throw it in the garbage.

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Re:Tesla’s former CTO is building a giant lithium-ion batter... by totalZero on Sunday August 30, 2020 @07:32AM (#24322696)

It's not the core charge that makes you return a battery -- it's the core refund.

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Re:Tesla’s former CTO is building a giant lithium-ion batter... by shajznnckfke on Sunday August 30, 2020 @06:44PM (#24326623)

Agreed. The point of the core charge is to make the program more palatable to manufacturers. They’d rather the customer see the charge as a line item than rise their prices to fund it. I think the line item also helps educate the customer at purchase time that the refund exists.

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