As the electric vehicle (EV) parc grows and ages, the question of what to do with an end-of-life EV battery becomes more pressing. The two options today are to pass it on to a second-life application, usually in some form of energy storage, or to recycle it. The markets for both offer promising growth potential, but they are certainly not equal.
IDTechEx forecasts that the second-life EV battery market will be worth US$$7bn by 2033, with Fairfield Market Research projecting a slightly more bullish US$9bn by the end of 2030. Those projections pale in comparison to recycling. McKinsey describes the potential value creation for EV battery recycling as “massive” and estimates the market value at US$95bn by 2040. So, why the huge gap?
Economics
“Second-life use of batteries has been technically demonstrated to be entirely feasible,” explains David Greenwood, Director for Industrial Engagement and Chief Executive of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult at WMG, an academic department at the University of Warwick and a UK hub for battery research. WMG has run programmes taking ten-year-old EV batteries with 60-80% remaining useful state of health and converted them for second-life application. The projects confirmed that these batteries could serve in a more benign environment, working less hard than they would in a vehicle, for another five to ten years.
The core of the challenge is more economic than technical.
