Gigafactories are recycling old EV batteries into new ones

Re:Gigafactories are recycling old EV batteries into new ones by Havoc on Sunday October 30, 2022 @04:55AM (#33392543)

I guess it depends on how expensive the recycling is. If you can do that fast & cheap then there is little point in making people drive around with 30% cars (plus people just won't want to)

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Re:Gigafactories are recycling old EV batteries into new ones by VBprogrammer on Sunday October 30, 2022 @05:25AM (#33392702)

Imho, if 10-15 year old electric cars have that kind of degradation then the switch to electric cars has been a huge failure. We have a huge opportunity to increase the service life of electric cars, among other things, to offset the higher initial environmental cost.

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Re:Gigafactories are recycling old EV batteries into new ones by thevagrant on Sunday October 30, 2022 @05:51AM (#33392884)

That's what concerns me the most. If cars become like long life computers. 8 to 10 year shelf life and then.. "oh we can't get an official battery replacement for that model anymore. Would you like an untrusted refurb battery we can't guarantee for more than 2 years?" Or even worse, sorry no more software security updates for that model. Best to upgrade.

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Re:Gigafactories are recycling old EV batteries into new ones by VBprogrammer on Sunday October 30, 2022 @06:07AM (#33392972)

This is one of those places where we need regulators so step up I think. The Nissan Leaf has been so thoroughly reverse engineered that people can transplant almost all of its components into another Leaf or even an ICE car.

However, there are so many cars coming out (particularly from startups with manufacturing in China) at the moment that it could quickly overwhelm the efforts of the limited number of car hackers to keep up. There should be a reasonable path to detailed specifications if / when manufacturers no longer are willing to supply a replacement battery.

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Re:Gigafactories are recycling old EV batteries into new ones by Havoc on Sunday October 30, 2022 @05:54AM (#33392896)

Well that's what the tech can do right now. So while we wait for advances replacing and recycling just the battery is our best bet. At least that keeps the rest of the car (and thus its carbon print) in circulation.

A bit like I've kept my iphone for ~5 years now but did a battery refresh halfway through. Its the best option within constraint given

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Re:Gigafactories are recycling old EV batteries into new ones by Sakos on Sunday October 30, 2022 @07:04AM (#33393343)

This is one of those cases where I think it's weird when people are so focused on cost. The environmental cost is extremely high to mine lithium and externalities aren't priced in to the price of lithium. We should be doing everything we can to reuse the lithium we've already mined.

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Re:Gigafactories are recycling old EV batteries into new ones by manfre on Sunday October 30, 2022 @08:12AM (#33393736)

I'm happy for you that cost is not something you need to focus on. For many people, they don't have as much savings or an income that is high enough for them to not focus on cost.

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Re:Gigafactories are recycling old EV batteries into new ones by Sakos on Sunday October 30, 2022 @01:39PM (#33396657)

Yeah, that's not what I was talking about. Are you even in the same conversation? Or do individual people build recycling plants for lithium now?

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