The negative tone of the comments feels like a an old car salesman trying to sell you a diesel engine instead of an EV.
An old EV battery pack is still incredibly valuable both for second hand usage in renewables (An old EV battery is not 'dead' just not performant enough for vehicle use) and recycling materials (Lithium is incredibly difficult to mine).
No1 seems to be a good solution, although it just postpones the recycling phase.
If a Tesla Model S battery dips below 70% capacity, you can easily remove it from the car and reuse the individual battery packs in 2 or 3 home battery solutions. People don't need a super performant battery that holds 100kWh for their homes, 15kWh will probably do.
Without charging the creators of products the total cost to create and dispose of the product the incentives are always wrong.
Charge oil companies for the cost of removing their product from the atmosphere after it's been burnt, and charge battery companies the cost of mining pollution and recycling
I am actually very much in favor of this, mostly because I believe the true cost of FF is orders of magnitude higher than the lifetime cost of batteries. Just the cost of deaths from burning FFs alone would make using them as fuel unfeasible.
Also, it'd be nice to do this all the way down the line, then maybe we'd finally see the legislation implemented for disposable packaging that the "Keep America Beautiful" propaganda was designed to counter[0].
This. Externalities need to become accounted for when we want to completely evaluate the cost of an activity.
Just because those companies or us as individuals don't need to pay for the future damage, doesn't mean that cost doesn't exist, and by not accounting the externalities, the consumption of said products is incentivised since they become "cheaper" than alternatives that are presented to the end user with a higher cost.
In Norway the producer or importer must pay an environmental fee (miljøgebyr) that finances the infrastructure for recycling of things like batteries, tyres, etc.
THIS. In many legal systems companies are required to pay to recycle their waste. And recycling is expensive.
This created huge incentives for criminal organizations. Sketchy recycling companies that dodge regulations, bury toxic waste into building foundations, and make huge profits.
Also, most companies in developed countries simply offshore polluting industrial processes to less rich countries.
At some point you still need to make someone responsible for disposal. And they may act improperly whatever the economic model adopted. Ultimately we need well run countries with laws and enforcement. And a culture that supports that.
Wouldn't it make more sense to just tax imported metals and miners in the US - for the externalities of mining metals - than to tax battery makers specifically?
At Tesla's battery day they said they plan to recycle their own batteries, claiming it's a lot easier if you're only recycling one kind of battery.
That seems to fit well with what the article described as ideal: "direct recycling, which would keep the cathode mixture intact." I guess Tesla would have to remove their "indestructible polyurethane cement that holds [the cells] together."
According to northvolt 50 procent of the cathode material is going to be reused to make new cells and the bigger issue is that there isn't going to be enough spent batteries to recycle.
Is the view that this is a problem from memories of lead acid batteries in combustion vehicles? I might be ignorant but I can't see lithium batteries being a big problem
Lead acid batteries are highly recyclable. People just are unable to think rationally about certain toxic substances and assume that they just have to be stored away from everything Yucca Mountain style.
Washington Examiner looks like the landing spot for an ad you would get on Facebook. I strongly doubt 90% of the world would die from that. It would be bad sure, but humans are resourceful.
“ In seven days, the over 100 nuclear power reactors run out of emergency power and go Fukushima, spreading radioactive plumes over the most populous half of the United States. ”
I didn’t see in the article, but why can’t the nuclear power plants shut down well before they ‘go Fukushima’?
While I agree this scenario is representative to what is likely to happen if nobody reacts, I don't agree that it must necessarily happen or that is a reason to stay on petrol cars.
The difference between batteries and petrol is that batteries can be reprocessed. The problem is unless we do something (set up regulation) it is likely the unregulated way in which it is going to happen will cost a huge pollution and suffering.
Think in terms of lead and lead-acid batteries specifically. There is a mandated system (at least here in EU) that tries to prevent the components of lead acid batteries to get back into environment. For example, when I want to buy a replacement battery I can't throw the old one in the trash and I am expected to exchange the old one for the new one and pay extra if I want to only buy new one without giving away the old.
Is it too hard to think we can do something like that for the huge card batteries which are much less disposable than the lead acid ones?
>I'll keep my very efficient Audi diesel car (79g/km CO2) for now thanks.
I bet that's the exact reason why you drive that exact car. Because of course the coolant, oil, acid batteries, etc. your car uses is disposed of correctly, or one of the hundreds of parts that needs replacing every X amount of time in an ICE. Never mind the waste that oil production itself causes.
New modes of transportation and energy generation will not be 100% clean and waste free, I think it would be naive to think we could actually do that. But they can be steps in the right direction.
If your cynical assumption is that we can't do it right anyway, why do you even pretend that driving your old car is somehow better? If we won't dispose of lithium batteries properly, we won't dispose of all the things your old car produces either.
Not really. Batteries like AAA are already being recycled because it makes economical sense. In fact thieves steal it and need vigilance.
You are confused with "electrical components" that are mostly plastic, very hard to disassemble and not worth it economically.
A Tesla battery cost over $6000. Materials like Cobalt or Lithium are worth a lot in a concentrated form, much easier than extracting it from the mine. As technology improves, the metals in those batteries are worth more.
So what is going to happen is:
Short term: people will use their old car batteries for electrical network support.
Medium term: Governments are going to require recycling protocols like they already do with ICEs cars.
Long term: Companies will develop protocols to recycle it. A battery is the same thing repeated hundreds of times. The individual cells are standardized,and platforms will be shared between different manufacturers, that makes it way easier to recycle.
“Wind turbine blades at the end of their operational life are landfill-safe, unlike the waste from some other energy sources, and represent a small fraction of overall U.S. municipal solid waste,” according to an emailed statement from the group. It pointed to an Electric Power Research Institute study that estimates all blade waste through 2050 would equal roughly .015% of all the municipal solid waste going to landfills in 2015 alone.
> Battery powered cars are going to be the next disaster, after the fibre glass disposal scandal of wind farms.
> I'll keep my very efficient Audi diesel car (79g/km CO2) for now thanks.
Why are you framing this as being a particular problem for electric cars and wind farms? It sounds like a problem that encompasses all of global trade, manufacturing and modern technology.
I think there is money in using modern robotics for automatic recycling of batteries. There are millions of cars but probably only hundreds of battery module types in the coming decades. So certifying a recycling algorithm for a new module type shouldn't be a difficult task, and wouldn't require retooling.
I wonder what happens to the used car market. When the battery is pretty much borked a used car is of no use. And replacing the battery would be way too expensive for many people who rely on used cars.
I haven't heard of batteries dying on old EVs being a problem. Usually battery pack replacement is due to faulty cells from production, which manifests during the warranty period most of the time. I know degradation was a problem with old Nissan Leafs, since they had no proper cooling, compounded by the fact that they started with a tiny battery to begin with. I've heard of replacements being done there, but a lot are still driving around with the original battery 10 years later.
I'm pretty sure we could still use our EV for daily driving with 70% degradation (of 30kWh), since we can charge in our garage. Probably more reliable than an old ICE car too.
The bigger the original battery, the higher the degradation can be tolerated without the car being useless. So the problem will decrease over time. There is also a big focus on long-lasting batteries in battery R&D for EVs. Ref Teslas million mile battery/drivetrain.
Some EVs also make it possible to replace individual cells or submodules of the battery. Though I haven't heard of that being done in the real world yet.
Remember that if you DO replace the battery, you can get a car that's pretty much as good as new with regards to the drivetrain. The inverter and motor is likely to outlast the car anyway. It may even be better than new, in terms of range, if the replacement battery has a higher capacity, which could be possible if replacements are made with a next-generation battery technology.
So far the used car market for EVs is fascinating. Right now the mean "first owner" life of an EV still seems to be triple that of an ICE vehicle. An average EV owner is keeping the car for closer to 9 years compared to the 3 year average turnover of ICE vehicles that has been a used car market staple for decades. (A lot of used car dealers would hope this statistic would decline as we have moved past the earliest of early adopters to more "mainstream" buyers, but so far there are no indications of this shifting.) Because of that EVs are holding their market prices more stable over time than ICE vehicles as they age and there's a lot fewer EVs on the used car market to judge any clear statistics just yet.
The market prices may seem to be reflecting that overall reliability of an EV is much higher than comparable ICE vehicles as they age and that so far battery degradation hasn't been a market issue. Though again, that may still be some bias from much, much smaller sample sizes to date.
What we do know is that of the EVs entering the used market, very few show noticeable signs of battery degradation (again, at 9 years on average!). Most of the ones with very noticeable battery degradation are Nissan Leafs. Most of those are still getting resold at decent prices (compared to equivalently aged ICE vehicles) and as cars to new owners (often as a second commuter car for a household some of these statistics suggest) and expected to still be on the roads a surprising number of years even after "noticeable degradation".
Some of the earliest of these degraded batteries were still under lease from Nissan, as Nissan for the first few years of Leaf sales had a battery lease model, and Nissan hasn't released statistics but admitted "surprise" that very few of the leases have been called in and most people still prefer to drive the Leafs as-is "degraded battery" or not rather than release the batteries to secondary usage. Nissan had plans for a project like Tesla's PowerWall for secondary life batteries (only; Tesla sells PowerWalls built from entirely newly sourced batteries), but claims so far they've yet to receive back enough batteries to build a single one even given how notably "degraded" their batteries have as a reputation in the used market.
All of which is to say that current indicators are that EVs seem to be on the road with their original batteries right now statistically for 15+ years even most of the "most degraded" ones the used market has seen to date. Replacing the batteries hasn't seemed to be an issue that has manifested yet in the used market. Though that extra reliability currently seems to come at a cost in the used market for the people who rely on cheap used cars because the cars seem likely to remain more expensive than ICE vehicles as that first owner statistic alone likely keeps the prices compared to age higher, but the overall reliability also may be keeping the prices high.
Just require manufacturers to recycle their own batteries. Quickly their designs will change to make it easier/cheaper for them, and you won’t need a 1-size-fits-all design via legislation.
The batteries will have a second life even after they're completely useless for cars. They can be used as grid storage for solar power. The Duck Curve makes such batteries valuable even when they're not very efficient. Poor capacity/weight ratio doesn't matter when they are sitting on the ground.
Is there a good scientific/safety reason for which Tesla's batteries are held together by polyurethane cement, as opposed to something easier to deal with?
They are relatively easy to recycle, and valuable enough that "metal theft" is a thing. Remember all the rusted-out cars that folks had in their yards? They're mostly gone now.
See "Junkyard Planet; Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade" by Adam Minter, fascinating book IMO.
The same place they send those all those unused cruise ships to.
Fascinating how they beach it and then those poor Bangladeshi's/Indians descend on it like a bunch of ants armed with only the most rudimentary tools like acetylene torches and front end loaders.
Stripping it like a dead animal until nothing remains.
Hydrovolt is establishing a ((...)) battery recycling hub in Norway, laying the foundations for a circular supply chain for electric car batteries in Europe.
They get recycled. Next question, and thanks for the scaremongering of a technology that irrefutably is better for the environment than the way we're currently collectively shitting all over it (ICE vehicles).
And of course, reduction: investments in public infrastructure and pedestrian-based city design to reduce the need for individual ownership and the total number of cars overall.
[+] [-] natch|4 years ago|reply
Unfortunately I’m not surprised the article fails to mention him.
[+] [-] DoingIsLearning|4 years ago|reply
It's not a problem, it's in fact a huge business.
The negative tone of the comments feels like a an old car salesman trying to sell you a diesel engine instead of an EV.
An old EV battery pack is still incredibly valuable both for second hand usage in renewables (An old EV battery is not 'dead' just not performant enough for vehicle use) and recycling materials (Lithium is incredibly difficult to mine).
[+] [-] npsimons|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] nelsonic|4 years ago|reply
1. Use them for energy storage 2. Automated battery recycling 3. Use recovered materials to make new batteries
[+] [-] apexalpha|4 years ago|reply
If a Tesla Model S battery dips below 70% capacity, you can easily remove it from the car and reuse the individual battery packs in 2 or 3 home battery solutions. People don't need a super performant battery that holds 100kWh for their homes, 15kWh will probably do.
[+] [-] mavhc|4 years ago|reply
Charge oil companies for the cost of removing their product from the atmosphere after it's been burnt, and charge battery companies the cost of mining pollution and recycling
[+] [-] npsimons|4 years ago|reply
Also, it'd be nice to do this all the way down the line, then maybe we'd finally see the legislation implemented for disposable packaging that the "Keep America Beautiful" propaganda was designed to counter[0].
[0] - https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-perspec...
[+] [-] rbanffy|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SocratesV|4 years ago|reply
Just because those companies or us as individuals don't need to pay for the future damage, doesn't mean that cost doesn't exist, and by not accounting the externalities, the consumption of said products is incentivised since they become "cheaper" than alternatives that are presented to the end user with a higher cost.
[+] [-] kwhitefoot|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] goodpoint|4 years ago|reply
This created huge incentives for criminal organizations. Sketchy recycling companies that dodge regulations, bury toxic waste into building foundations, and make huge profits.
Also, most companies in developed countries simply offshore polluting industrial processes to less rich countries.
[+] [-] lrem|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 7952|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onlyrealcuzzo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] touristtam|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alkonaut|4 years ago|reply
The environmental problem seems worse for products that are cheaper and easier to produce from scratch, than to recycle.
The gigafactories that pop up around the world right now contain recycling lines to feed the battery production.
[+] [-] alkonaut|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AtlasBarfed|4 years ago|reply
Is Cobalt valuable?
Is Nickel valuable?
Can a car battery be repackaged/refurbished to home energy storage?
Can a car battery be repackaged/refurbished to appliances like lawnmowers and snowblowers and power tools?
This is almost as dumb a headline as "what will we do with all the windmill blades?"
Meanwhile, there exists something called "mountaintop removal" in coal.
[+] [-] DennisP|4 years ago|reply
That seems to fit well with what the article described as ideal: "direct recycling, which would keep the cathode mixture intact." I guess Tesla would have to remove their "indestructible polyurethane cement that holds [the cells] together."
[+] [-] bagacrap|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Phenomenit|4 years ago|reply
https://northvolt.com/newsroom/Announcing-Revolt
[+] [-] space_rock|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway0a5e|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tpmx|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mlatu|4 years ago|reply
Maybe think less in terms of used lead acid batteries but used car tires instead?
though even those are refurbished nowadays.. :shrug:
[+] [-] mensetmanusman|4 years ago|reply
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/new-em...
Nature is periodic, take it seriously: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event
[+] [-] JohnJamesRambo|4 years ago|reply
A more reasonable article-
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-studies-warn-...
[+] [-] ad|4 years ago|reply
I didn’t see in the article, but why can’t the nuclear power plants shut down well before they ‘go Fukushima’?
[+] [-] mothsonasloth|4 years ago|reply
1. Batteries ripped out of cars
2. Sold to "unscrupulous" scrap dealers
3. Put on boats to Phillipines or West Africa
4. Crushed and pounded with a rock by a 10 year old child, then burned in a rudimentary smelter to separate metals from plastics.
5. Extracted metals bought by middlemen
6. Metals certified as being safely mined/sourced
7. Re-manufactured into a car battery
Battery powered cars are going to be the next disaster, after the fibre glass disposal scandal of wind farms.
I'll keep my very efficient Audi diesel car (79g/km CO2) for now thanks.
[+] [-] lmilcin|4 years ago|reply
The difference between batteries and petrol is that batteries can be reprocessed. The problem is unless we do something (set up regulation) it is likely the unregulated way in which it is going to happen will cost a huge pollution and suffering.
Think in terms of lead and lead-acid batteries specifically. There is a mandated system (at least here in EU) that tries to prevent the components of lead acid batteries to get back into environment. For example, when I want to buy a replacement battery I can't throw the old one in the trash and I am expected to exchange the old one for the new one and pay extra if I want to only buy new one without giving away the old.
Is it too hard to think we can do something like that for the huge card batteries which are much less disposable than the lead acid ones?
[+] [-] FriedrichN|4 years ago|reply
I bet that's the exact reason why you drive that exact car. Because of course the coolant, oil, acid batteries, etc. your car uses is disposed of correctly, or one of the hundreds of parts that needs replacing every X amount of time in an ICE. Never mind the waste that oil production itself causes.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/mar/01/fossil-fuel...
New modes of transportation and energy generation will not be 100% clean and waste free, I think it would be naive to think we could actually do that. But they can be steps in the right direction.
If your cynical assumption is that we can't do it right anyway, why do you even pretend that driving your old car is somehow better? If we won't dispose of lithium batteries properly, we won't dispose of all the things your old car produces either.
[+] [-] bumbada|4 years ago|reply
You are confused with "electrical components" that are mostly plastic, very hard to disassemble and not worth it economically.
A Tesla battery cost over $6000. Materials like Cobalt or Lithium are worth a lot in a concentrated form, much easier than extracting it from the mine. As technology improves, the metals in those batteries are worth more.
So what is going to happen is:
Short term: people will use their old car batteries for electrical network support.
Medium term: Governments are going to require recycling protocols like they already do with ICEs cars.
Long term: Companies will develop protocols to recycle it. A battery is the same thing repeated hundreds of times. The individual cells are standardized,and platforms will be shared between different manufacturers, that makes it way easier to recycle.
[+] [-] jurip|4 years ago|reply
“Wind turbine blades at the end of their operational life are landfill-safe, unlike the waste from some other energy sources, and represent a small fraction of overall U.S. municipal solid waste,” according to an emailed statement from the group. It pointed to an Electric Power Research Institute study that estimates all blade waste through 2050 would equal roughly .015% of all the municipal solid waste going to landfills in 2015 alone.
[+] [-] StavrosK|4 years ago|reply
> I'll keep my very efficient Audi diesel car (79g/km CO2) for now thanks.
"Battery powered cars are a small disaster, so I'll keep my big disaster instead".
[+] [-] worldsayshi|4 years ago|reply
> I'll keep my very efficient Audi diesel car (79g/km CO2) for now thanks.
Why are you framing this as being a particular problem for electric cars and wind farms? It sounds like a problem that encompasses all of global trade, manufacturing and modern technology.
[+] [-] nullifidian|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kybernetyk|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] audunw|4 years ago|reply
I'm pretty sure we could still use our EV for daily driving with 70% degradation (of 30kWh), since we can charge in our garage. Probably more reliable than an old ICE car too.
The bigger the original battery, the higher the degradation can be tolerated without the car being useless. So the problem will decrease over time. There is also a big focus on long-lasting batteries in battery R&D for EVs. Ref Teslas million mile battery/drivetrain.
Some EVs also make it possible to replace individual cells or submodules of the battery. Though I haven't heard of that being done in the real world yet.
Remember that if you DO replace the battery, you can get a car that's pretty much as good as new with regards to the drivetrain. The inverter and motor is likely to outlast the car anyway. It may even be better than new, in terms of range, if the replacement battery has a higher capacity, which could be possible if replacements are made with a next-generation battery technology.
[+] [-] pornel|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WorldMaker|4 years ago|reply
The market prices may seem to be reflecting that overall reliability of an EV is much higher than comparable ICE vehicles as they age and that so far battery degradation hasn't been a market issue. Though again, that may still be some bias from much, much smaller sample sizes to date.
What we do know is that of the EVs entering the used market, very few show noticeable signs of battery degradation (again, at 9 years on average!). Most of the ones with very noticeable battery degradation are Nissan Leafs. Most of those are still getting resold at decent prices (compared to equivalently aged ICE vehicles) and as cars to new owners (often as a second commuter car for a household some of these statistics suggest) and expected to still be on the roads a surprising number of years even after "noticeable degradation".
Some of the earliest of these degraded batteries were still under lease from Nissan, as Nissan for the first few years of Leaf sales had a battery lease model, and Nissan hasn't released statistics but admitted "surprise" that very few of the leases have been called in and most people still prefer to drive the Leafs as-is "degraded battery" or not rather than release the batteries to secondary usage. Nissan had plans for a project like Tesla's PowerWall for secondary life batteries (only; Tesla sells PowerWalls built from entirely newly sourced batteries), but claims so far they've yet to receive back enough batteries to build a single one even given how notably "degraded" their batteries have as a reputation in the used market.
All of which is to say that current indicators are that EVs seem to be on the road with their original batteries right now statistically for 15+ years even most of the "most degraded" ones the used market has seen to date. Replacing the batteries hasn't seemed to be an issue that has manifested yet in the used market. Though that extra reliability currently seems to come at a cost in the used market for the people who rely on cheap used cars because the cars seem likely to remain more expensive than ICE vehicles as that first owner statistic alone likely keeps the prices compared to age higher, but the overall reliability also may be keeping the prices high.
[+] [-] azinman2|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hellbannedguy|4 years ago|reply
Sure, the wealthy boys will swap out for the best cells, but most of us will ride until it dies.
I have a feeling this might not be the problem we are expecting.
[+] [-] pornel|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qq12as|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Thorentis|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] carapace|4 years ago|reply
See "Junkyard Planet; Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade" by Adam Minter, fascinating book IMO.
[+] [-] tibbydudeza|4 years ago|reply
Fascinating how they beach it and then those poor Bangladeshi's/Indians descend on it like a bunch of ants armed with only the most rudimentary tools like acetylene torches and front end loaders.
Stripping it like a dead animal until nothing remains.
[+] [-] natmaka|4 years ago|reply
https://hydrovolt.com/
[+] [-] npsimons|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agentultra|4 years ago|reply
And of course, reduction: investments in public infrastructure and pedestrian-based city design to reduce the need for individual ownership and the total number of cars overall.