Re:What happens to used electric car batteries?
by jillesvangurp on Saturday November 06, 2021 @06:23AM
(#29129028)
There are plenty of companies working on this. Hundreds of millions of VC money invested already.
And the situation is already pretty good considering there are no piles of lithium batteries being dumped left right and center. Just not a thing because they are way too valuable for that.
You say landfill, I say lithium mine with extremely rich deposits of lithium. Much richer than most natural deposits of the stuff. People are investing in companies that are extracting it from brines that have no more than a few hundred parts per million. It's that valuable. A battery that has kilos of the stuff is worth the kilo price (about 25-29$) minus the price of extraction. A typical Tesla would have around 60-70 kilos of the stuff; close to 2000$ if you can extract it. The lithium in a completely spent EV battery is worth more than many second hand ICE cars that are still driving around. And that's just accounting for the lithium. There is also copper, nickel, cobalt (at least for now) and a few other nice things in there that are each pretty lucrative to attempt to recycle.
Good old lead acid batteries are recycled as well for the same reason. They are still worth a few dollars because of the raw materials. ICE cars are routinely stripped for anything remotely valuable that can be reused or recycled before the rest of it is melted down so the metal can be recycled.
Anyway, consumers don't need to be sold on anything. They've been fine burning obscene amounts of petrol coming from places they couldn't care less about, mined under nature destroying circumstances they never cared about either. All while not caring about the lethal effects of the pollution they are causing in the environment where they and their loved ones actually live and while not feeling the slightest amount of guilt buying SUV type ICE vehicles guzzling many times the amount of fuel they would actually need to do their shopping and school runs. There is more than a bit of double standards being applied here. Hypocrisy would be a better word for it.
And the situation is already pretty good considering there are no piles of lithium batteries being dumped left right and center. Just not a thing because they are way too valuable for that.
You say landfill, I say lithium mine with extremely rich deposits of lithium. Much richer than most natural deposits of the stuff. People are investing in companies that are extracting it from brines that have no more than a few hundred parts per million. It's that valuable. A battery that has kilos of the stuff is worth the kilo price (about 25-29$) minus the price of extraction. A typical Tesla would have around 60-70 kilos of the stuff; close to 2000$ if you can extract it. The lithium in a completely spent EV battery is worth more than many second hand ICE cars that are still driving around. And that's just accounting for the lithium. There is also copper, nickel, cobalt (at least for now) and a few other nice things in there that are each pretty lucrative to attempt to recycle.
Good old lead acid batteries are recycled as well for the same reason. They are still worth a few dollars because of the raw materials. ICE cars are routinely stripped for anything remotely valuable that can be reused or recycled before the rest of it is melted down so the metal can be recycled.
Anyway, consumers don't need to be sold on anything. They've been fine burning obscene amounts of petrol coming from places they couldn't care less about, mined under nature destroying circumstances they never cared about either. All while not caring about the lethal effects of the pollution they are causing in the environment where they and their loved ones actually live and while not feeling the slightest amount of guilt buying SUV type ICE vehicles guzzling many times the amount of fuel they would actually need to do their shopping and school runs. There is more than a bit of double standards being applied here. Hypocrisy would be a better word for it.