Recycling electric car batteries

The electric vehicle market has been growing rapidly for several years. Replacing IC vehicles at high speed, nearly 77 million hybrid and electric cars could be sold by 2025, according to the IAE’s Global EV Outlook 2022.

These numbers are growing and will continue to grow for a long time. Battery recycling is therefore a necessity to limit the pressure on certain metals and to conserve our natural resources.
 

Why battery recycling is a real environmental issue

EV batteries weigh an average of 300 kg but can be up to twice that for some models.  

They are composed of plastics, solvents, electronic compounds and small quantities of high-value metals such as lithium, cobalt, copper, manganese and nickel.

These highly strategic metals are essential to our energy transition. Nevertheless, their extraction and production are concentrated in a few geographical areas. This situation leads to tensions over resources and distribution channels in the face of growing demand. Recovering the metals contained in end-of-life batteries is an ecological solution that mitigates the pressure on virgin raw materials, limits the carbon and environmental footprint associated with mining, and protects the environment from pollution emanating from end-of-life batteries. 

European legislators* have taken matters into their own hands with a proposed new regulation making it mandatory to include recycled raw materials in the production of new batteries:

• 2025: mandatory declaration of the percentage of recycled content
• 2031: 16% for cobalt, 6% for lithium and nickel
• 2036: 26% for cobalt, 12% for lithium and 15% for nickel.

European institutions also aim to define how efficient the recycling process is, and therefore the yield from the processes used, with new mandatory targets:

• 2027: 90% for cobalt, copper and nickel, 50% for lithium
• 2031: 95% for cobalt, copper and nickel, 80% for lithium

_{*Final figures for the regulations adopted by the European Parliament on June 14, 2023.}