Battery Recycling

Lithium-ion battery recycler Redwood Materials and Audi are today launching a program that enables consumers to drop off their old battery-powered devices at local Audi dealerships, and then Redwood will recycle them to build EV batteries.

In order to qualify for the $7,500 tax credit, the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) requires a proportion of battery minerals in EVs to be extracted or processed in the US or free-trade partner countries. But a lot of automakers simply aren’t prepared for that requirement.

Electrek spoke with Megan O’Connor, cofounder and CEO of Nth Cycle, a Beverly, Massachusetts-based metals processing tech company, about how her company can help EV manufacturers address this challenge quickly.

As consumer preference continues trending toward electric vehicles, automakers are moving swiftly to lock up critical battery materials. With battery recycling technology advancing, it will help ease the transition, unlocking the true potential of the sustainability behind electric vehicles. A new EV battery recycling plant in Alabama from Li-Cycle can process up to 10,000 tonnes, enough for about 20,000 EVs per year, helping the US venture toward a zero-emission economy.

GM announced Thursday that its venture capital division, GM ventures, will invest in Lithion Recycling to support a sustainable circular battery ecosystem. The new partnership will focus on researching and developing a viable EV battery recycling method to further reduce emissions and the usage of critical minerals.

Kia Europe has announced a new partnership with encore Deutsche Bahn to reuse former EV batteries to create scalable energy storage systems. The prototype has already been implemented in Germany using Kia Soul EV batteries and marks the start of the automaker’s Europe-wide initiative.

This morning, Volkswagen Group of America (VWGoA) announced a collaboration with Redwood Materials, Inc. to implement a battery-recycling supply chain in the United States for Volkswagen- and Audi-branded EVs. The collab represents VW’s commitment to sustainability in the United States and beyond while simultaneously expanding Redwood’s closed-loop battery supply chain.

Global chemical giant BASF is going to build a commercial battery-recycling, black-mass plant in Schwarzheide, a town in Brandenburg, eastern Germany.

Automakers are racing to produce electric vehicles, yet few firms currently know how to recycle old EV batteries. Experts at the Argonne National Laboratory, a US Department of Energy science and engineering research center in Lemont, Illinois, are inviting the public to listen in as experts explore the challenges – and solutions – of recycling lithium-ion batteries.

Hydrovolt, the largest battery recycling plant in Europe, has started operations in Fredrikstad, Norway.

The plant is a joint venture between two Norwegian companies – Hydro, one of the world’s largest aluminum companies, and Northvolt, a battery producer building battery factories in Sweden and Germany.

Big-battery manufacturing is ramping up to power EVs, but what will we do with the batteries when they’re dead? There’s a lot of money going into battery recycling companies, but equally important is how those companies actually procure the batteries in order to recycle them. Electrek spoke with Leo Raudys, the CEO of Call2Recycle, about how the Atlanta-based company closes the loop between producers, consumers, and recyclers and makes it easier to get dead e-mobility batteries into recyclers’ hands. 

President Biden and the US Department of Energy have issued multiple notices of intent to allocate $2.91 billion in support of EV battery manufacturing as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The DOE shared plans to use the funds to further battery materials refining, production plants, and battery cell manufacturing facilities in addition to battery recycling.