By Amit Kumar, Senior Manager - Solutions, R&D, Hitachi America, Ltd.
Society will benefit from new approaches and new thinking to provide a second life for batteries.
As more than four million Electric Vehicles (EV) now travel across U.S. roads and highways, many of the batteries in those EVs are ending their useful life because of age or performance degradation.1 The question is, what do we do with all these EV batteries?
The environmental and social impact of the situation is drawing attention across the globe. For example, EVs sold in 2019 alone would cause 500,000 tons of unprocessed battery pack waste. The lithium and cobalt extraction needed for EV batteries is associated with high environmental and social risks, like human rights violations as well as extensive use of energy and water in places with scarce water resources.2
Giving a second life to EV batteries isn’t simply a matter of tossing a battery into a truck and taking it to the local recycling center. Creating a meaningful second-life ecosystem for EV batteries requires extensive coordination between collection points (dismantlers, repair shops, dealers), EV and battery pack manufacturers, logistics providers, and second-life application providers. The nuances they must deal with range from being able to accurately gauge the value of an old battery to adhering to federal and local fire safety rules for battery transport and storage.
Thus, the transition to a sustainable energy and transportation future depends on finding innovative ways to extend the life of EV batteries and put systems in place to support a circular battery economy.
EV batteries that can no longer fulfill the vehicles’ needs still have a lot of juice in them. EV batteries have up to 80% capacity left when they end their useful life.
Keeping these batteries out of landfills where their lithium, nickel, cobalt, and other chemicals can leech into the environment is paramount. European regulations already require new batteries to contain a certain percentage of recycled materials. Similar requirements will likely come to the U.S. soon. It's a strategic imperative to keep these valuable minerals within the borders of the U.S.
As U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm noted, “Capturing the full battery supply chain—from sourcing critical materials to manufacturing to recycling—puts the U.S. in the driver’s seat as we build our clean energy economy.” 3
The maximum value from an end-of-life product is reusing it for the same application, followed by repurposing the product for another application. For example, EV batteries could be repurposed for scooters. Batteries that are no longer suited for EVs can live a second life for years afterward through several paths:
New solutions are coming every day, but this is only part of the battle.
For all the work being put into giving EV batteries a second life, the EV battery circular economy today is hindered by information silos and disconnects that can stymy the best intentions. Different companies generate or record new data at various stages of the battery lifecycle, making it difficult to coordinate their interactions.
The industrial circular economy needs marketplaces where the participants can buy and sell from each other efficiently at scale, as well as share critical information.
Sharing information could be an important step to addressing the challenges in forecasting availability, predicting a battery’s remaining value, minimizing reverse logistics costs, and maximizing value recovery from end-of-life batteries.
For example, an automotive dismantler could benefit from easy access to the manufacturer’s safe battery removal training videos. OEMs could benefit by knowing the availability and health condition of batteries, so they estimate the value and ship them to the right second-life application provider or recycling partner.
A circular battery ecosystem—powered by a digital solution framework, consisting of innovative analytical models and a trusted data platform—could help hone the five key value drivers for battery circularity. These are: safety, regulatory compliance, carbon footprint reduction, quality, and financials.
Indeed, a study published in the journal Nature estimated this approach could reduce average transportation costs of end-of-life batteries by 11% to 44% compared to current shipping practices. What’s more, battery health could be estimated with error rates of less than 1%. The value recovered from batteries could be boosted from 52% to 60% by routing batteries with good health to second-life application providers. 5
A staggering amount of innovation is occurring today in the pursuit of giving retired EV batteries a second life or harvesting critical minerals by recycling. The rapidly evolving science around metallurgy and hydrometallurgy is turning sustainability into something akin to a moon race.
Hitachi is at the forefront of building innovations that are helping this circular economy to flourish and grow. Hitachi provides a trusted data platform that allows the various participants to share up-to-date information, so they can coordinate the complicated details of removing, collecting, and shipping these batteries. These efforts are leveraging digital capability, AI analytics, blockchain technology, and microgrids, a small network of electricity users with a local source of supply that is usually attached to a centralized national grid but can function independently. Indeed, Hitachi supplies a myriad of energy products and technologies, including microgrids, battery energy storage systems, and grid transformers.
As the U.S. and the world plot out a sustainable energy and transportation future, the strategy for EV batteries will be of critical importance. By reusing, repurposing, and recycling EV batteries, we can build a stronger, more sustainable, and more resilient economy. Achieving these goals will require companies to work together and share information in new ways, so they breathe new life into the second life of EV batteries.
Learn more about battery circularity and talk to a Hitachi expert about this here.
Senior Manager - Solutions, R&D, Hitachi America, Ltd.
Amit Kumar is a Senior Manager in Big Data Analytics Solutions Lab of Hitachi America. He leads research and development of material traceability and circular economy solutions for electric vehicle, battery, and power industries.
Amit has over 25 years of technology experience with a focus on digital transformation leveraging analytics, sensing, and web3.0 technologies. He worked in several technology leadership roles at Hewlett Packard Enterprise Services for 14 years. He holds an MBA degree from McCombs School of Business, University of Texas Austin, and an MSc degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur.
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