An EV battery can continue delivering value long after its life in a vehicle, creating circularity, it can be reused or its materials recovered.

Recycling processes can recover substantial quantities of critical battery materials (up to 95 per cent for nickel, cobalt, and manganese and up to 80 per cent for lithium, depending on process conditions and battery chemistry).

General Motors (GM), for example, has completed a pilot demonstrating a closed-loop recycling pathway: building our first EVs using battery cells made with 100 per cent recycled nickel, cobalt, and manganese which includes material recovered from end-of-life GM EV battery packs.

This month, the first new Cadillacs, Chevrolets, and GMC Sierra EV AT4 rolled off the line at Spring Hill Assembly and Factory Zero plant, powered by GM’s first battery cells containing cathode active material made with recycled critical minerals.

And a EV battery needs not return to being part of an EV battery, it to work in new applications like stationary energy storage before recovering [and recycling] the materials for a new EV cell. Together with Redwood Materials, GM is deploying roughly 10,000 GM second-life batteries into real-world energy infrastructure. That includes the largest second-life battery microgrid in North America with additional deployments ahead, including at our own manufacturing footprint here in the US.

However, the use of old EV batteries may not stop there, they could be used in main grid BESS plants, As EV use grows globally, so will the supply of batteries for repurposing or recycling.

Europe's battery energy storage system (BESS) capacity recently surpassed a cumulative operational battery capacity over 100GWh, whilst the cumulative capacity of batteries installed in electric vehicles across Europe (including the EU, UK, and Norway) stands at 535 GWh.

So, EV batteries may have another life, as home energy storage, in industrial grids, as commercial backups, as part of grid BESS or indeed, as a new EV battery.

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