BATTERY STRATEGIES
With the number of EVs on our roads
set to soar to 125 million by the year 2030,
is enough being done to ensure battery
technology is recyclable and sustainable?
WORDS: LEON POULTNEY
Nissan announced earlier this year
that it has sold more than 400,000
of its Leaf model since it was fi rst
introduced in 2010, with hopes
that fi gure will surpass the half
a million mark by early 2020. Similarly, Tesla
declared the 300,000th EV rolled off the
production line in early 2018, with the
company vying to be the world’s leaders
of battery-powered passenger cars.
It won’t be long before most of the world’s
biggest automakers are jubilantly posting
similar metrics but in the midst of all the
fanfare, there is only a murmuring
surrounding the question “where do
EVs go when they die?”
“It is a really interesting time for EV battery
technology, because the fi rst generation of cars
such as the Nissan Leaf, Renault Zoe and Tesla
Model S will soon be reaching a point where
they are taken off the road and replaced. It
is only now that we will see how these big
manufacturers approach the subject of
recycling or reusing old battery packs,”
explains Professor Rohit Bhagat, chair
of electrochemical energy storage at the
Institute of Future Transport and Cities,
Coventry University.
The automakers’ legal obligation to recycle
or reuse battery packs (the 1997 EU End of Life
Vehicles Directive is just one such legal
framework) means numerous innovations
and second life use-cases are now beginning
to surface.
Audi, for example, has revealed that it plans
to reuse battery packs from its hybrid and
electric models, such as the Audi A3 e-tron and
Audi Q7 e-tron, to power its factory machinery,
such as such as fork-lift trucks and tow
tractors, in its Ingolstadt plant. “Every
lithium-ion battery represents high energy
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