A new energy vehicle with a guide price of 300,000 yuan may have a battery cost of 100,000 yuan or more. "Generally speaking, a power battery with a capacity of less than 80% cannot be used in a new energy vehicle," said Yin Chengliang, vice president of the Automotive Engineering Research Institute of Shanghai Jiaotong University, in an interview.
"Many (new energy vehicle) companies now promise consumers a battery lifespan and warranty of up to 10 years, but if we take into account factors such as the usage environment, the average lifespan of a power battery is only 5 years," said an industry insider who declined to be named.
Electric vehicle power battery recycling status
With the new energy vehicle market showing great promise, some are questioning: what will happen to the power batteries that can no longer be used in new energy vehicles in five years or a few years?
The China Automotive Technology Research Center predicts that by 2020, the cumulative amount of scrapped electric vehicle power batteries in my country will reach 120,000 to 170,000 tons.
Tiered utilization looks beautiful.
These batteries that cannot be used in electric vehicles are not entirely worthless. Theoretically, they can still be used in energy storage, power supply base stations, streetlights, and low-speed electric vehicles, depending on their capacity, and eventually enter the recycling system. This is what the industry generally refers to as the reuse or secondary use of power batteries.
According to foreign media reports, at an automotive battery symposium last week, General Motors announced that it will soon publicly release its development plan for the secondary utilization of electric vehicle batteries. Prior to this, GM had proposed using electric vehicle batteries for the power grid. This aligns largely with the current thinking of industry insiders in China.
"The secondary use of power batteries is certainly for energy conservation. On the other hand, if this secondary use becomes widespread, it will undoubtedly greatly reduce the cost of new energy vehicles," Yin Chengliang said.
The "Development Plan for Energy-Saving and New Energy Vehicle Industry (2012-2020)" issued in July 2012 clearly stated that it is necessary to formulate management measures for the recycling and utilization of power batteries, establish a tiered utilization and recycling management system, guide manufacturers to strengthen the recycling and utilization of waste batteries, and encourage the development of specialized battery recycling and utilization companies.
Following this, "including the Beijing and Zhejiang branches of the State Grid Corporation of China, all have been committed to the research of residual energy in power batteries and have invested funds in research projects on the cascade utilization of batteries, but progress has been relatively slow," Sun Dongdong, a new energy analyst at OFweek Industry Research Center, previously told reporters.
In fact, "using recycled power batteries for large-scale energy storage is probably just wishful thinking," a technician from a new energy company in North China pointed out.
According to him, although the density requirements for individual cells in energy storage batteries are not as high as those for power batteries, the scale of energy storage batteries in an energy storage project is relatively large, usually reaching hundreds of kilowatts or even megawatts. The average battery capacity of a new energy vehicle is about 30 kWh. If power batteries are to be used for energy storage, a large number of battery packs are undoubtedly needed. This will make the entire energy storage battery pack face consistency and management difficulties, thus affecting the use of the entire energy storage battery.
Moreover, "From the perspective of the current state of the industry, due to the different battery routes, battery specifications, and battery testing requirements of different car companies in my country, there are too many battery models, resulting in excessively dispersed production, which also brings greater difficulties to the 'aftermarket,' that is, the tiered utilization," Sun Dongdong said.
Therefore, according to the aforementioned technicians, if energy storage is to be used in a tiered manner, it will likely only be applied on a small scale, such as residential energy storage projects. However, "although from a technical standpoint, small-scale residential energy storage is relatively easy to achieve, in reality, the demand in the Chinese market is not significant at present. Relatively speaking, it is easier to implement in the United States or other countries because their residential environment is mainly detached houses, and energy storage equipment is easy to install."
Policy encouragement makes it difficult to overcome the commercial value hurdle.
While various problems certainly exist, the recycling and reuse of power batteries has become a top priority. According to relevant plans, by 2020, the cumulative production and sales volume of new energy vehicles in China will reach 5 million units. Based on this, the China Automotive Technology Research Center predicts that by 2020, the cumulative amount of scrapped electric vehicle power batteries in my country will reach 120,000 to 170,000 tons.
"A 20-gram mobile phone battery can pollute the water volume of three standard swimming pools. If discarded on land, it can pollute one square kilometer of land for about 50 years. Imagine if several tons of electric vehicle power batteries were discarded in the natural environment? Large amounts of heavy metals and chemicals would enter nature, causing even greater pollution," Professor Wu Feng of Beijing Institute of Technology once stated publicly.
Perhaps for this reason, on December 30, 2014, the Ministry of Finance and three other ministries jointly issued the "Notice on Fiscal Support Policies for the Promotion and Application of New Energy Vehicles from 2016 to 2020 (Draft for Comments)" (hereinafter referred to as the "Notice"), which clarified that automobile manufacturers are the responsible entities for the recycling and utilization of power batteries and are responsible for the recycling of power batteries.
To encourage manufacturers to recycle power batteries, many local governments are actively exploring various approaches. Shanghai has introduced a policy stating that the government will subsidize automakers 1,000 yuan per set of power batteries recycled; Shenzhen has established a power battery utilization and recycling system: for every car sold, the manufacturer contributes 600 yuan and the government contributes 300 yuan for power battery recycling, thus initially establishing a battery recycling mechanism.
“We are currently discussing the subsequent battery recycling with our suppliers, but there are no specific details to disclose at this time,” Wang Yu (pseudonym), a new energy vehicle manufacturer in Anhui, told us. “Because the sales of new energy vehicles were just starting last year, we were more focused on sales volume, while battery manufacturers are busy expanding production capacity and don’t seem to be paying much attention to the recycling issue.” The aforementioned person, who declined to be named, believes that
More importantly, in his view, the problem stems from inadequate technology and the lack of a complete commercial chain for the reuse of new energy batteries, making it difficult to form a closed-loop industry. "To give an extreme example, look at lead-acid batteries. They can be recycled at car repair shops and garbage sorting sites. Why? Because lead-acid recycling easily generates commercial value—take a screwdriver, pry open the used battery, pour out the acid, remove the most valuable lead plates, and resell them to make money," the aforementioned person said.
But why can't lithium batteries be recycled? In his view, the lithium battery recycling process is too complex, and it is very difficult to commercialize the direct recovery of high-value-added intermediate products such as positive electrode materials, negative electrode materials, electrolytes, and separators from waste lithium batteries. In addition, the materials and formulas of lithium batteries from different manufacturers are different, making recycling even more difficult.
Recycling is difficult, but reuse is even more challenging. The aforementioned technician explained that, for example, even household energy storage batteries require secondary development based on the needs of energy storage projects. This necessitates standardization in the battery pack's appearance, installation, power interfaces, signal interfaces, and various protocols and voltage levels. Even after all this is completed, and even if a buyer is willing to accept the reused product, how can it be guaranteed that the reused product will have a cost and price advantage over new products?
