Batteries of an electric car in China.
Credit: Zhang Peng /Lightrocket/Getty
Plummeting battery costs have made electric vehicles (EVs) a truly disruptive technology.
In fact, EVs now use more lithium ion batteries than consumer electronics. But Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) projects EV-battery demand will rise another 25-fold by 2030 — and EVs will represent more than half of all new car sales by 2040.
This means that millions of used EV batteries will eventually be flooding the market — batteries that may have as much as 70 percent of their original power capacity, even though it can no longer meet the strict requirements for powering its car.
No wonder every major car company in the world is exploring how much value their EV battery has in its “second life.” After all, BNEF projects that over the next three decades, companies will spend some $550 billion “in home, industrial and grid-scale battery storage.”
This potential second life for EV batteries is a clean energy game changer for two reasons.
Firstly, these used EV batteries can deliver much cheaper electricity storage […]
Recycling of lithium ion batteries is virtually impossible on an economic level and dangerous because lithium and water don’t play well together. Once again another example of a technology that has gained wide acceptance that is proving problematic. I have been reading stories of fires destroying recycling centers that stored mostly laptop batteries and dangers and difficulties removing batteries from other consumer goods – not a positive trend.
On the one hand very useful and on the other what to do with all the batteries once they are completely exhausted. EV batteries will be added to huge numbers of batteries in all consumer goods that most of us give no thought.
This is driven by the economic system that runs the world. It entrances/imprisons billions of us humans to consume more and more, to discard the old at every opportunity for the new improved version. It really saddens me as I do not see a good end as we choke on the refuse. And I continue doing my part of getting and spending.