Recently, the Beijing Municipal Small Passenger Vehicle Quota Management Office's release of the second batch of vehicle quota applications for this year has attracted widespread attention. It turns out that as of 24:00 on April 8th, the Beijing small passenger vehicle quota application website had received over 230,000 applications and confirmations of extensions for individual new energy passenger vehicle quotas. Based on current rules and quota allocation numbers, new energy vehicle quotas may be available until 2023.
Previously, people were enthusiastically discussing that they would have to wait until 2019 to buy a new energy vehicle, but now, that wish may have to be postponed for another four years. This shows just how popular new energy vehicles are.
Although the explosive growth in sales of new energy vehicles makes their future look bright, the effective recycling and disposal of their core component, batteries, has become an unavoidable issue for the industry in order to achieve further leaps in development.
Who should be responsible for battery recycling?
According to the "Technology Roadmap for Energy-Saving and New Energy Vehicles" released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in October 2016, my country's new energy vehicle production is projected to reach 4 million units by 2025 and 10 million units by 2030. This will lead to a surge in demand for the power batteries used in these new energy vehicles. Data shows that power battery shipments were 0.79 gigawatt-hours in 2013, but soared to 39.2 gigawatt-hours in 2017.
However, since the introduction of new energy vehicles to the market, power batteries have entered a peak period of recycling and disposal. How to recycle batteries, whether they can be effectively reused, and who should be responsible for the entire life cycle of power batteries have become the focus of attention in academia and industry, and are also hot issues of concern to countless electric vehicle users.
At the end of last year, Zhu Weihua, deputy secretary-general of the Automotive Information Service Committee of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers and secretary-general of the Beidou Vehicle Networking Certification Alliance, pointed out to the media the issue of new energy vehicle battery recycling: "Currently, the residual value of new energy vehicles produced is only 20% after five years of use, and battery recycling is something that car companies must do."
Zhu Weihua's understanding of who is responsible for the recycling and disposal of batteries aligns closely with the government's management approach. In October 2017, China's "Interim Measures for the Management of Recycling and Utilization of Power Batteries for New Energy Vehicles," submitted to the WTO for public comment, attracted media attention. These measures clearly define the responsibilities for the design, production, and recycling of power batteries, stating that "automobile manufacturers will bear the primary responsibility for the recycling of power batteries, ensuring their effective utilization and environmentally friendly disposal."
The "Measures" clearly outlines responsibilities from the design, access, and production of power batteries all the way to the recycling stage. Its basic principle is that the recycling of power batteries should rely on automakers. As Miao Wei, Minister of Industry and Information Technology, stated, "Automakers must be responsible for the recycling of batteries."
With responsibilities clearly defined, the recycling and disposal of new energy electric vehicle batteries has become simpler. "Recycling new energy batteries is very simple. It's a battery pack or battery array, not individual cells. So after the battery is scrapped, it can be directly disassembled and handed over to a recycling company. They can disassemble the battery pack and test the battery cells. If they meet the standards, they can be reused; if they don't, they are sent to a processing plant as waste batteries," Wang Minzhong, vice chairman of the China Battery Industry Association, told reporters.
Recycling requires more than just recycling; proper processing is also essential.
In fact, experts believe that recycling power batteries is not a complicated or difficult process. As long as the relevant companies take the initiative to assume responsibility, the entire recycling process can proceed in an orderly manner. The difficulty in handling power batteries lies in the post-recycling process—the disposal of end-of-life batteries.
"Recycling electric vehicle batteries isn't the problem; the key issue is processing. The disposal of scrapped batteries remains a problem," said Wang Minzhong. Experts believe that if scrapped batteries aren't effectively processed after recycling, and if there's no active tracking of batteries intended for reuse, then "recycling alone is useless."
Current regulations aim to actively encourage companies to recycle and reuse power batteries, extracting their effective value for recycling. However, the regulations for low-value, end-of-life batteries are unclear. "The regulations only state that they should be handled in accordance with national environmental protection regulations," said Wang Minzhong. The problem lies in the lack of national environmental protection standards and regulations in this area.
Such loopholes are clearly detrimental to the environmentally friendly disposal of waste batteries. As is well known, power batteries contain metallic elements such as lithium, cobalt, and nickel. If waste power batteries are not disposed of according to strict environmental standards, and are allowed to enter the natural environment or are disposed of arbitrarily without standards, the resulting environmental harm is difficult to estimate. This has always been the most concerning aspect of new energy vehicles.
"Therefore, our suggestion to the country is that if we are going to deal with it, we should deal with both the useful and the useless parts together." In Wang Minzhong's view, once a waste battery enters an environmental treatment plant, every byproduct must be processed.
For example, when a waste lead-acid battery enters a processing plant, all its components, such as sulfuric acid, need to be extracted. Only then, when all that remains is recycled plastic and no other waste that could potentially pollute the environment, is the processing considered complete.
Experts also suggest that, regarding the issue of the flow of batteries for secondary use, new methods can be actively adopted to track their flow, such as setting up QR codes or marking them on the motors to clarify their flow and make recycling work more targeted.
There aren't many technical difficulties in processing new energy vehicle batteries. Elements like cobalt and nickel can be removed chemically, and lower-value materials in the anode material can be physically processed. However, companies currently find it difficult to profit from battery processing, thus their willingness to recycle and process batteries is not strong. Wang Minzhong hopes that companies should allocate a portion of their product profits to battery processing.
Enterprises have already taken the lead in establishing a foothold.
Since new energy vehicles entered the market in 2013, five years have passed. Currently, the lifespan of power batteries is generally around five years, meaning that power batteries are gradually entering their peak recycling and disposal period. According to predictions from the China Automotive Technology Research Center, by 2020, my country's cumulative amount of scrapped power batteries will reach 120,000 to 200,000 tons. In fact, contrary to experts' perception that companies lack the motivation to recycle and reuse power batteries, companies see significant potential in the recycling, dismantling, and secondary use of power batteries. Insiders from power battery-related companies point out that many companies have already begun to strategically position themselves in this market.
From companies that entered the market earlier and specialize in power battery-related businesses, such as Bangpu Recycling Technology, a professional battery recycling and gradient energy storage company, and companies like GEM and Chaowei Group, which recycle and reuse waste batteries, to new energy vehicle companies like BAIC New Energy and BYD, all have begun to exert their efforts in battery recycling and processing, striving to gain a foothold in this emerging market of power battery recycling and processing.
However, the vitality of the power battery industry is closely related to the development vitality of the new energy vehicle industry. It is worth noting that the limited driving range caused by battery technology bottlenecks often makes potential buyers hesitate. As one of the world's leading electric vehicle brands, Tesla's battery fire incidents have also raised concerns about the safety of new energy vehicle batteries.
There is still much room for innovation in the future development of power battery technology, and continuous technological updates are needed to truly meet market demands. Wang Minzhong said, "Our work is to continuously improve the energy density, driving range, and safety of power batteries."
Experts also expressed their hope that the power battery industry will continue to innovate, developing power batteries with longer range, greater safety and convenience, while forming a healthy and orderly battery recycling and disposal industry chain to help the vigorous development of new energy vehicles in China.
