Electric Car: What Happens to the Batteries When the Car is Scrapped?
As the number of electric vehicles continues to grow what will happen to their batteries once the electric car ends its life?
Batteries contain chemicals and elements that require handling and processing requirements to ensure that batteries do not pollute the environment with harmful chemicals and elements. Electric vehicle batteries degrade over time meaning their capacity to hold their charge decreases over time. An electric vehicle battery pack consists of individual battery cells in some cases can be repaired or replaced. Car manufacturers offer a warranty that guarantees the battery will maintain 70% of its capacity for seven or eight years and 100,000 miles.
Second Life
When a battery reaches the end of its serviceable life such as the car has reached the end of its life or the battery’s capacity has decreased significantly. The battery can be repurposed for other uses. Nissan has repurposed their batteries to provide backup power to Amsterdam ArenA the home of Ajax Football Club. Electric vehicle car batteries can be installed in homes to absorb energy generated by renewable sources and can be fed back during the day when demand is high.
Recycling
When a battery degradation of its charging capacity exceeds the acceptable to be used elsewhere, the batteries can be recycled. Batteries contain many useful resources such as lithium, nickel, manganese, and cobalt. These materials are expensive and time-consuming to mine and process. Reusing these resources can help slow down the depletion of these natural resources and reduce costs.
Summary
As demand for electric vehicles increases the demand for batteries and natural resources will to cater the demand. As our electric vehicles reach the end of their lifecycle we will need to consider the best way to recycle or reuse our used batteries to avoid causing further environmental damage. Development in battery technologies will continue and the degradation of the batteries will be much slower allowing electric vehicles to last longer on the roads. As we look to electric cars to help reduce our carbon output we must remember that this also affects the afterlife of the vehicle.