When you compare the cost of driving a gas-powered vehicle versus driving an Electric Vehicle (EV), the math is pretty straightforward: Driving an EV costs less. The equation for environmental impact is similar. Electric vehicles, from their manufacture through to driving them on the road, have less of an impact on the environment than gas-powered vehicles. Put simply: EVs save money and are better for the environment. These are facts.
The lingering question about EVs, though, relates to EV battery recycling. When you compare the disposal processes of used vehicles, gas-powered vehicles have a long and well-established history. They can be resold and refurbished and may last for another hundred-thousand miles, then they’re scrapped and recycled. So what about EVs?
While EVs share a lot of DNA with gas-powered vehicles, the presence of a large lithium-ion battery is a very big difference. Many EV components can be recycled similar to a gas vehicle, but EV battery recycling is another story.
How are EV batteries disposed of?
A robust industry has evolved to take care of internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles that have reached the end of their lifecycles. Many parts can be reused to repair vehicles still on the road, and what can’t be reused is often recycled. Glass, rubber, and metal are all harvested from scrapped vehicles and resold to manufacturers for use in other products—often new vehicles.
EVs undergo much the same process at their end-of-life. However, the battery pack is unique and requires special handling.
It starts with those vehicle dismantlers removing the battery packs and selling them to recyclers who specialize in lithium-ion batteries. There, the batteries are carefully dismantled into their separate parts. Circuitry, wires, and plastics are all removed, and the battery cells themselves are crushed to separate the various minerals they are composed of.
Those materials are then repacked and sold back to battery makers to create new batteries. A lot of those components are, in fact, infinitely recyclable, meaning they can be used and reused again and again. In theory, this means batteries will get cheaper over time as the materials to make them become more readily available. And given the numbers in our latest EV market summary—specifically, how the market is expected to grow 108% year-on-year—there should be a lot of recycled material to feed that loop.
All good so far, right?
The current state of EV battery recycling
Because EVs are so new, EV battery recycling is currently in its early stages. According to the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), the recycling infrastructure as of the end of 2022 was capable of recycling at least 105,150 tons of battery materials annually. But the materials going into recycling plants isn’t coming out of end-of-life EV batteries. It’s mostly scrap materials resulting from the process of creating EV batteries.
There just aren’t a lot of EV batteries being recycled right now. Not because they can’t be, but because most EV batteries haven’t reached the end of their lifecycles.
The average lifespan of a lithium-ion EV battery is 10 to 20 years. Given most major EV manufacturers have only been making EVs for the past decade or so, most EVs on the road are still going strong. We just haven’t reached that far end of the loop quite yet.
An expected 26.4 million EVs will be on the road by 2030. The ICCT estimates that our current recycling capacity can handle end-of-life EV batteries through 2036… just six years past that milestone. Accounting for facilities that have been announced but not yet built, the date gets pushed to 2044.
So it’s possible that demand will exceed market capacity at some point down the road. But we’re not there yet, and lots can happen in the meantime.
The future of EV battery recycling
Thanks to legislation like the 2022 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, more money than ever is being allocated to build facilities that recycle, process, and manufacture batteries. The Department of Energy alone has been empowered to grant $2.8 billion to the EV battery industry, much of which is going to battery handling.
Then there’s the Inflation Reduction Act, also passed in 2022, which grants US taxpayers a federal tax credit on the purchase of a new EV. The act stipulates that a certain percentage of the materials used to create those vehicles must be mined or processed in the United States. This puts pressure on EV manufacturers to step up domestic EV battery recycling.
And as Fast Company reports, the more EV batteries are recycled in the US, the more raw materials will be available, ultimately reducing the cost to manufacture EVs, which is quiet an incentive in itself. It’s even expected to spur higher growth in the sector.
So more recycling leads to more batteries, leading to more EVs on the road, which eventually need to be recycled. And hopefully, with enough industry infrastructure in place, a closed loop.
Meet the coming demand with ChargeLab
But before it’s recycled, an EV battery will be charged hundreds or even thousands of times.
Whether you’re charging a fleet, a single vehicle, or serving your local community, ChargeLab’s software platform can power your needs at scale. To learn more about how we can help you build a better charging infrastructure, contact us today.
