Thank you Matt for speaking sanity on this subject. The internet is full of hyped up EV FUDs out there saying that the "batteries are not unsustainable". In reality, through recycling, they can be very sustainable.
I know I come in here and bag pretty hard on what I see as far too much misplaced hype on solar and Tesla but this is another great and important video. I have ALWAYS had a serious stance on e-waste to the extent that I have stockpiled ALL of my e-waste until my province (New Brunswick) finally started an e-recycling program. I also have been repurposing and recycling any 18650 cells I can get my hands on for about 3 years. I finally ordered a Vruzend battery building kit and have several projects in mind. Any cells either of the lithium or non rechargable kind are taken to the HomeDepot in my city as they have a battery recycling collection point. I have made it a point to be very clear about e-waste with my teenage son even before he was a teenager. We all should make it a point to let our friends and family know about any programs that they may not know about. I am a hobbyist in my personal time with both computers and battery tech. Not everyone is. We need to make sure as politely as possible, that people know and understand the importance of this subject. Shorter, e-waste of all manner is a serious issue that we all have to get in on. It is one of the few taxes that I was fine with showing up on electronic goods in my province. E-waste needs to be kept out of landfills at almost all costs. Warehousing it until a method of handling it is better than putting it in the ground.
I’ve done something similar for a while too (stockpiling all of my e-waste until I can make sure it’s getting reused or recycled properly). And couldn’t agree more on helping to politely and nudge/educate friends and family to do the same.
I am peripherally involved in the oversight of the shut down of the Exide lead acid battery recycling facility in Vernon, California. For decades, Exide discharged lead and arsenic over nearby communities. Cleaning up, decontaminating, and dismantling the facility itself is a huge and painstaking undertaking. Prioritizing the cleanup of residential houses downwind of the facility is even more gut wrenching. Modern technology greatly reduces the amount of lead and arsenic fallout from such operations, and Exide and its predecessors operated in this location for decades. It wasn't really feasible to retrofit this facility. I have long questioned the real environmental cost of electric vehicles powered by lithium batteries. Zero emissions at the tailpipe doesn't come close to describing the total environmental impact of mining, manufacturing, and disposal of these batteries, and I've yet to hear of many success stories doing so. It will be interesting to see what this situation turns into in the coming years. I do hope we find ways to mitigate this. Repurposing as you've described it is intriguing, but it is still just kicking the can down the road. The research you've described is encouraging.
Awesome video, Matt! It’s great that there are companies devoted to solving this issue. But when super capacitors advance in capacity, it will improve EV’s in every single way, including the environmental impact when creating and recycling the car.
Hey Matt! I enjoyed watching your video. I think that Li-ion battery recycling is necessary to sustain future EV development. I just wanted to let you know that you mistakenly referred to the University of California, San Diego as the University of San Diego at ~ 3:55. Just thought it was worth pointing out. Looking forward to your next video.
Again: Great video, Matt! This time i'm a little late to the party but the video was still very informative and professionally produced! Can't wait for your next video(s)!
Imagine a world in which a battery pack is bolted to the bottom of a car for 10 years, then it's simply removed and bolted to a wall for 20 years, then it's removed again and fed whole into a grinding+classifying system, at the end of which is material input for battery production. It makes me so happy to know that I have a very good chance of living to see such a world.
Everyone, you included here, is worried about the lithium, theres barely any in the batteries, a few milligrams. And lithium is not rare, so why worry about the lithium. The other metals, cobalt in particular are far rarer and far more treacherous in their supply stream, they are far more important to recover than the lithium.
Great vid Matt. It's important to talk about this angle of the energy storage business. Awesome that there are companies that are getting into the space and pushing the state of the art (and also using tried and true) but the real determiner will be market driven. Look at what has happened to the state of world recycling with China basically shutting its doors to that which they used to pay for from all of us. Without an economic market incentive, all types of recycling languish. It's my sincere hope that the processes can be refined to the point where it's cheaper than original acquisition and that it makes fiscal sense to reuse the cells in home and grid systems.
Thanks for watching. I think the market will grow around recycling of lithium batteries. We saw the market grow around lead acid batteries, and there’s a huge potential upside financially for the companies that figure out how to recycle lithium batteries profitably.
You could easily imagine the car manufacturers assaying the returned batteries and selling them on to other companies, who then reuse them in various ways depending upon their quality. They probably wouldn't get to the general public without some investigation as to their quality (Good ones are worth more) and only the really cruddy ones get a full reworking back to raw lithium by, say, Tesla or the Japanese brands.
It seems like recycling car batteries should be fairly straightforward. Battery companies buy back spent lithium ion cells from salvage yards. Nearly all cars get funneled through these facilities at the end of their lives already. Salvage yards will want to get rid of batteries and make money (that's what they do) . Car companies will will want to buy batteries as stock material for new batteries at a cheaper price than mining new material. A market will form and prices will set themselves. Small consumer electronics like phones and tablets is much trickier because they're not that valuable so people won't bother.
Hey there! We made the Li-Cycle video featured in this episode, great to see it's reach. That video was made 2 years ago and we're currently making the next update - lots of exciting things to share.
Batteries are a complex mix of metals that must be separated to be useful but must be a very rich 'ore' compared to any ore we extract from the ground. I would think that the company that has aced this process might be ideally suited to the separation of the metals in ocean bottom nodules when we have worked out the economic harvesting of the nodules. This would completely eliminate the monopoly that some countries have on some of the strategic metals we need in our modern world.
Thank you so much for this great video. I have a question that while baterry recycling requires effort on R&D by the big company, what can individuals as battery users do until a proper and efficient methods will be found?
The best thing we can do in the meantime is make sure we’re properly disposing of our batteries. I wait until I have a small amount of batteries collected to be recycled and then take them to a recycling center or store that collects them.
I heard a company called American Manganese has patented a process that recovers 99.99% of the EV's minerals (all involved) at a battery-grade level (99.8%+ pure) Old battery in, new battery out.
It would be nice in 10 years to use my Model 3 batteries to power my home... Let's get a system to do that as it is more power then 5 power walls at 13.5 kw per now that is home power storage.
Thanks Matt very revealing coverage. Do you know if current Tesla owners will be able to upgrade to the new technologies as they become available.. at what cost? Keep your very informative videos coming. Carlo .. from France
Thanks for watching, Carlo. I haven't heard anything, but I doubt existing owners will be able to upgrade. The same thing has already happened with Model S owners not being able to upgrade to the 2170 cells used in the Model 3.
I wish that we will one day use gravity to store energy rather than batteries. In my view that is less resource intense. Batteries that have been used in cars should be used further tho before being recycled, but there shouldn't be a ton of new batteries just for stabilizing the grid. I think of projects like Gravitricity and energy vault when taking about gravitational energy storage systems. Then we also need to recycle less...^^
How many times can lithium be recycled and re-used? Does it become inert? After only one use in a car it only has 70% charge capability. Are we swapping one issue for another down the line?
I believe there’s no limit on the number of times it can be recycled. There’s a company called American Manganese that has a process that recovers nearly 100% of the materials. The end result is manufacturing ready materials.
One reason that it hasn't kicked off yet is that there just isn't that much to recycle yet when it comes to car batteries (on an industrial scale that is)
That’s my take too, but the need is growing almost exponentially over the past few years. The companies that crack this nut are bound to make a lot of money.
@@UndecidedMF I think Tesla and the other big once has got it as soon as the put some focus on it. The car batteries have got at least ten (probl. more) more years as stationary storage as well before end of life remember. The technology won't be an issue, it's the rules, regulations and politics as per usual that's going to have to be sorted in time that I worry about.
Hey Matt, while i appreciate your feature on LiON battery recycling I found one suggestion in your video very disturbing. Giving second life to LiON batteries recovered from EV is a very good idea but parceling it off to developing countries which are largely unregulated in terms of hazardous waste management will cause more harm than good. What would happen with the eventual end of life of these batteries in these countries which cannot afford the expensive infastructure to recycle them? I'm strongly against export of any kind of waste and believe any country should produce waste only to the extent they can themselves recycle. As we have seen even in case of seemingly benign plastics the recycling infrastructure in developing countries is absymal. All this waste ends up in landfills and oceans. We're now struggling with our own mountains of waste and don't need any more toxic imports.
The only battery technology which I think it could be long-term viable is Aluminium-Air. ~1300 Wh/kg in contrast with just ~260-270 Wh/kg at Lithium-Ion batteries. Also flywheel energy storage could be a serious option...
phil durre overall, it’s waay more environmentally friendly than the combustion engine. Hate to break the bad news, but pretty much any manufacturing process has a certain amount of “environmental unfriendliness”
Generic User always good vids, but one point overlooked is the alternative process in Germany where metals are dissolved with acids, which can be processed to regain the metals. Touted to be far more environmentally friendly than smelting.
How about talking on the Cobalt which is the much bigger issue to the environment. This is only half of the story. The Lithium production is not nearly as bad. I am pro EV, but want to see stories telling the whole story. Tesla has been working for years to minimize the amount of Cobalt in their batteries since 2012.
Cobalt is definitely it’s own topic. So much to pick apart and look into around the impacts on the environment and the hazardous work conditions for the workers in some mines. Tesla is getting closer and closer to eliminating it from their batteries ... can’t happen soon enough.
I will not lie. But I did not think, you could recycle a batterie. So, I will in a few years get an all-electric car. When I can drive from my home to the office and back, without recharging.
First, you have to get rid of greedy bankers and power hungry selfish to allow better development we all know they hold up progress, end fiat banking go to barter take away ego and greed,
i hate bankers, but even they cannot stop this. china, india, and the rest of the developing world all want transportation and cheap electricity. self driving taxis/shuttle/buses plus renewable energy is ten times cheaper in the long run then present systems. the days of the western oligarchy controlling everything is over. even if the international oligarchy is just as bad the technology will make everyone's lives better.
There’s far more lithium in the world than would be needed for everyone to drive an EV, but in time it will hopefully be cheaper to recycle than mine more materials.
most of the worlds cars will become robo taxis and we will move on from lithium ion. if for some insane reason one of these battery breakthroughs does not commericial. we will find a way to get lithium ion out of ocean water. i think this is extremely unlikely, just an example not to worry. there are trillions of ways to make batteries. the combinations of chemistries is almost infinite. we only need a handful to work really well. one for short-term shortage, on for long term storage, and a few different types for tranpsortation.
7000 tons/ year is 14000 cars, thats nothing compared to the 1.6 billion cars around. mostly they are shredded and burned. thats your green energy in reality...
![[LIVE] : ONE ลุมพินี 76 | คู่เอก "ผึ้งหลวง vs สมิงดำ"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/9SBshmGQOIM/mqdefault.jpg)
Thank you Matt for speaking sanity on this subject. The internet is full of hyped up EV FUDs out there saying that the "batteries are not unsustainable". In reality, through recycling, they can be very sustainable.
Exactly! That's why I was motivated to make this video. It' kind of a continuation of my EV Myths video I put out a few months ago.
"not unsustainable"
@@2nd3rd1st Thank you, I always try to improve my writing and the feedback is necessary & appreciated.
I know I come in here and bag pretty hard on what I see as far too much misplaced hype on solar and Tesla but this is another great and important video.
I have ALWAYS had a serious stance on e-waste to the extent that I have stockpiled ALL of my e-waste until my province (New Brunswick) finally started an e-recycling program. I also have been repurposing and recycling any 18650 cells I can get my hands on for about 3 years. I finally ordered a Vruzend battery building kit and have several projects in mind. Any cells either of the lithium or non rechargable kind are taken to the HomeDepot in my city as they have a battery recycling collection point. I have made it a point to be very clear about e-waste with my teenage son even before he was a teenager.
We all should make it a point to let our friends and family know about any programs that they may not know about. I am a hobbyist in my personal time with both computers and battery tech. Not everyone is. We need to make sure as politely as possible, that people know and understand the importance of this subject.
Shorter, e-waste of all manner is a serious issue that we all have to get in on. It is one of the few taxes that I was fine with showing up on electronic goods in my province. E-waste needs to be kept out of landfills at almost all costs. Warehousing it until a method of handling it is better than putting it in the ground.
I’ve done something similar for a while too (stockpiling all of my e-waste until I can make sure it’s getting reused or recycled properly). And couldn’t agree more on helping to politely and nudge/educate friends and family to do the same.
Reduce, reuse, and recycle! ♻️
...and research other chemistries.
I am peripherally involved in the oversight of the shut down of the Exide lead acid battery recycling facility in Vernon, California. For decades, Exide discharged lead and arsenic over nearby communities. Cleaning up, decontaminating, and dismantling the facility itself is a huge and painstaking undertaking. Prioritizing the cleanup of residential houses downwind of the facility is even more gut wrenching. Modern technology greatly reduces the amount of lead and arsenic fallout from such operations, and Exide and its predecessors operated in this location for decades. It wasn't really feasible to retrofit this facility. I have long questioned the real environmental cost of electric vehicles powered by lithium batteries. Zero emissions at the tailpipe doesn't come close to describing the total environmental impact of mining, manufacturing, and disposal of these batteries, and I've yet to hear of many success stories doing so. It will be interesting to see what this situation turns into in the coming years. I do hope we find ways to mitigate this. Repurposing as you've described it is intriguing, but it is still just kicking the can down the road. The research you've described is encouraging.
All my EV Battery recycling questions and concerns were answered. :)
Thank you.
Thanks for watching!
Was anyone else pondering these exact topics late at night?? Amazing video very glad to have liked and sub in the first 10 seconds.
Your research on this topic is unreal...
Thanks!
@@UndecidedMF Would you please cite your sources? Would be easy to follow some research on the topic. Great video!
Awesome video, Matt!
It’s great that there are companies devoted to solving this issue. But when super capacitors advance in capacity, it will improve EV’s in every single way, including the environmental impact when creating and recycling the car.
Thank you! And you’re right. The energy storage in EVs is going to continue to evolve and improve too.
@@UndecidedMF and by extension, ebike batteries I hope!
Very informative video. We can have a future where we use plastics and rare earth minerals that are 100% recycled.
Must get to the future first, dirty and fast.
Amazing!! 9 minutes covered everything !! Thanks!!
Hey Matt! I enjoyed watching your video. I think that Li-ion battery recycling is necessary to sustain future EV development. I just wanted to let you know that you mistakenly referred to the University of California, San Diego as the University of San Diego at ~ 3:55. Just thought it was worth pointing out. Looking forward to your next video.
D’oh! I sure did.
Again: Great video, Matt! This time i'm a little late to the party but the video was still very informative and professionally produced! Can't wait for your next video(s)!
Thanks for watching!
Imagine a world in which a battery pack is bolted to the bottom of a car for 10 years, then it's simply removed and bolted to a wall for 20 years, then it's removed again and fed whole into a grinding+classifying system, at the end of which is material input for battery production.
It makes me so happy to know that I have a very good chance of living to see such a world.
Closed loop recycling systems for energy storage like this could and will be game changing.
Everyone, you included here, is worried about the lithium, theres barely any in the batteries, a few milligrams. And lithium is not rare, so why worry about the lithium. The other metals, cobalt in particular are far rarer and far more treacherous in their supply stream, they are far more important to recover than the lithium.
I love the way you make complicated issues simple to understand!
Thanks!
Great vid Matt. It's important to talk about this angle of the energy storage business. Awesome that there are companies that are getting into the space and pushing the state of the art (and also using tried and true) but the real determiner will be market driven. Look at what has happened to the state of world recycling with China basically shutting its doors to that which they used to pay for from all of us. Without an economic market incentive, all types of recycling languish. It's my sincere hope that the processes can be refined to the point where it's cheaper than original acquisition and that it makes fiscal sense to reuse the cells in home and grid systems.
Thanks for watching. I think the market will grow around recycling of lithium batteries. We saw the market grow around lead acid batteries, and there’s a huge potential upside financially for the companies that figure out how to recycle lithium batteries profitably.
I hope a gigafactory closed loop (or regulations that make manufacturers responsible) don't kill what could be a very viable re-use market.
You could easily imagine the car manufacturers assaying the returned batteries and selling them on to other companies, who then reuse them in various ways depending upon their quality. They probably wouldn't get to the general public without some investigation as to their quality (Good ones are worth more) and only the really cruddy ones get a full reworking back to raw lithium by, say, Tesla or the Japanese brands.
Li cycyle is now going public via pdac spac
It seems like recycling car batteries should be fairly straightforward. Battery companies buy back spent lithium ion cells from salvage yards. Nearly all cars get funneled through these facilities at the end of their lives already. Salvage yards will want to get rid of batteries and make money (that's what they do) . Car companies will will want to buy batteries as stock material for new batteries at a cheaper price than mining new material. A market will form and prices will set themselves.
Small consumer electronics like phones and tablets is much trickier because they're not that valuable so people won't bother.
Exactly. Car battery recycling should be an easily solved problem. It's the small stuff that's the real tricky part.
As usual very thoughtful - thanks Matt
Thanks!
Hey there! We made the Li-Cycle video featured in this episode, great to see it's reach. That video was made 2 years ago and we're currently making the next update - lots of exciting things to share.
Awesome! Thanks for watching and looking forward to seeing what’s coming next.
Batteries are a complex mix of metals that must be separated to be useful but must be a very rich 'ore' compared to any ore we extract from the ground. I would think that the company that has aced this process might be ideally suited to the separation of the metals in ocean bottom nodules when we have worked out the economic harvesting of the nodules. This would completely eliminate the monopoly that some countries have on some of the strategic metals we need in our modern world.
Thank you so much for this great video.
I have a question that while baterry recycling requires effort on R&D by the big company, what can individuals as battery users do until a proper and efficient methods will be found?
The best thing we can do in the meantime is make sure we’re properly disposing of our batteries. I wait until I have a small amount of batteries collected to be recycled and then take them to a recycling center or store that collects them.
What's Awdi?
I'm trying to find out more about the battery recycling company called American Manganese. Would you be able to do a video on them?
Good video Matt. Keep up the good work.
Thanks!
I heard a company called American Manganese has patented a process that recovers 99.99% of the EV's minerals (all involved) at a battery-grade level (99.8%+ pure)
Old battery in, new battery out.
really cool video, thanks!
Nice little vid. Like the tune too!
Hi! Is there a chance you could update this year old video? Recycling EV batteries are way more better now than a year ago.
Thank you for the very educating and well created video but there just one more question.
will lithium ion batteries ever run out
It would be nice in 10 years to use my Model 3 batteries to power my home... Let's get a system to do that as it is more power then 5 power walls at 13.5 kw per now that is home power storage.
Excellent report, thanks
How can we a Battery recycling as a business?
We should teach environmental doctrine at early chielhood
Environmental *science,* not doctrine.
or communist doctrine, or white-man-is-evil doctrine... but that already is happening isn't it, old boy?
Great video Matt!!
Such a needed video
What about Dynacert?
Excellent again - thank you Matt
🙏
Hey I must ask you what you think about aqua metals?
Thanks Matt very revealing coverage. Do you know if current Tesla owners will be able to upgrade to the new technologies as they become available.. at what cost? Keep your very informative videos coming. Carlo .. from France
Thanks for watching, Carlo. I haven't heard anything, but I doubt existing owners will be able to upgrade. The same thing has already happened with Model S owners not being able to upgrade to the 2170 cells used in the Model 3.
Thanks Matt ... appreciate!!
Have you herd of AMYZF American Manganese? They are saying they can recover 100% in EV batteries. Also using green technology
I wish that we will one day use gravity to store energy rather than batteries. In my view that is less resource intense.
Batteries that have been used in cars should be used further tho before being recycled, but there shouldn't be a ton of new batteries just for stabilizing the grid.
I think of projects like Gravitricity and energy vault when taking about gravitational energy storage systems.
Then we also need to recycle less...^^
Agreed. There’s a lot of interesting work being done for grid scale storage beyond batteries alone. Gravitricity is an interesting one.
How many times can lithium be recycled and re-used? Does it become inert? After only one use in a car it only has 70% charge capability. Are we swapping one issue for another down the line?
I believe there’s no limit on the number of times it can be recycled. There’s a company called American Manganese that has a process that recovers nearly 100% of the materials. The end result is manufacturing ready materials.
Good job Matt
Thanks!
What is plan "B"?
Love the video. I'd like more like this
Thanks! More planned .... stay tuned.
Excellent Video.
Thanks! Your username is like schrodinger's cat.
One reason that it hasn't kicked off yet is that there just isn't that much to recycle yet when it comes to car batteries (on an industrial scale that is)
That’s my take too, but the need is growing almost exponentially over the past few years. The companies that crack this nut are bound to make a lot of money.
@@UndecidedMF I think Tesla and the other big once has got it as soon as the put some focus on it. The car batteries have got at least ten (probl. more) more years as stationary storage as well before end of life remember. The technology won't be an issue, it's the rules, regulations and politics as per usual that's going to have to be sorted in time that I worry about.
Impressive!
Imagine if the same recycling requirement were set for fossil fuels :-O I could have saved the world ;-)
This is definitely a great video, but as a German, its frustrating to hear Audi pronounced as "awdi"
Hey Matt, while i appreciate your feature on LiON battery recycling I found one suggestion in your video very disturbing. Giving second life to LiON batteries recovered from EV is a very good idea but parceling it off to developing countries which are largely unregulated in terms of hazardous waste management will cause more harm than good. What would happen with the eventual end of life of these batteries in these countries which cannot afford the expensive infastructure to recycle them?
I'm strongly against export of any kind of waste and believe any country should produce waste only to the extent they can themselves recycle. As we have seen even in case of seemingly benign plastics the recycling infrastructure in developing countries is absymal. All this waste ends up in landfills and oceans. We're now struggling with our own mountains of waste and don't need any more toxic imports.
Interesting point you raise.
Hey,I want to find the solution for battery.We are searching members to joing wits us and start our researches.
Real
Deserving to be searched
To charge a batterie takes alot of energy
The only battery technology which I think it could be long-term viable is Aluminium-Air. ~1300 Wh/kg in contrast with just ~260-270 Wh/kg at Lithium-Ion batteries.
Also flywheel energy storage could be a serious option...
@AmericanManganese
1:40 smelting is not environmentally friendly.
Yep no mention was made of the huge amounts of power required to smelt Overall a good vid though.
EV’s are not environmentally friendly,... thats a myth
phil durre overall, it’s waay more environmentally friendly than the combustion engine. Hate to break the bad news, but pretty much any manufacturing process has a certain amount of “environmental unfriendliness”
Generic User always good vids, but one point overlooked is the alternative process in Germany where metals are dissolved with acids, which can be processed to regain the metals. Touted to be far more environmentally friendly than smelting.
How about talking on the Cobalt which is the much bigger issue to the environment. This is only half of the story.
The Lithium production is not nearly as bad. I am pro EV, but want to see stories telling the whole story.
Tesla has been working for years to minimize the amount of Cobalt in their batteries since 2012.
Cobalt is definitely it’s own topic. So much to pick apart and look into around the impacts on the environment and the hazardous work conditions for the workers in some mines. Tesla is getting closer and closer to eliminating it from their batteries ... can’t happen soon enough.
Why don't we address the issue of planned obsolescence. THAT is how you reduce waste, which is far more efficient than recycling.
Hey
Hello.
AMERICA! Needs to get extremely better at recycling. Regardless of cost.
This is a problem. The solution could make a lot of money.
Hello
Hi!
I will not lie. But I did not think, you could recycle a batterie. So, I will in a few years get an all-electric car. When I can drive from my home to the office and back, without recharging.
First, you have to get rid of greedy bankers and power hungry selfish to allow better development we all know they hold up progress, end fiat banking go to barter take away ego and greed,
i hate bankers, but even they cannot stop this. china, india, and the rest of the developing world all want transportation and cheap electricity. self driving taxis/shuttle/buses plus renewable energy is ten times cheaper in the long run then present systems. the days of the western oligarchy controlling everything is over. even if the international oligarchy is just as bad the technology will make everyone's lives better.
So you belive your self 🤪
There won't be enough lithium if all the cars in the world are electric, recycling is actually cheaper than open a new mine in most cases.
There’s far more lithium in the world than would be needed for everyone to drive an EV, but in time it will hopefully be cheaper to recycle than mine more materials.
most of the worlds cars will become robo taxis and we will move on from lithium ion. if for some insane reason one of these battery breakthroughs does not commericial. we will find a way to get lithium ion out of ocean water. i think this is extremely unlikely, just an example not to worry. there are trillions of ways to make batteries. the combinations of chemistries is almost infinite. we only need a handful to work really well. one for short-term shortage, on for long term storage, and a few different types for tranpsortation.
7000 tons/ year is 14000 cars, thats nothing compared to the 1.6 billion cars around. mostly they are shredded and burned. thats your green energy in reality...