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As automakers continue to battle it out in the electric car race, some have begun to wonder, where will batteries go once they’ve reached the end of their automotive life? Simply disposing of batteries in some sort of landfill won’t help the environment and certainly won’t appeal to automakers or customers. To address this concern, several large automakers in the electric car race have partnered with companies knowledgeable about electricity and energy to plan ways to recycle and reuse aging electric car batteries and their power.
General Motors has announced that it will collaborate with the Swiss company ABB, a leader in power and automation technologies and the world’s largest provider of electrical grid systems, to design a plan to reuse the batteries of the Chevrolet Volt. The companies will develop several pilot projects and examine the Volt’s 16 kWh lithium-ion batteries to see how second-life car batteries can be used to provide grid-electricity storage systems. During pilot projects, companies will study renewable energy storage, grid load management, backup power supplies for communities, and time-of-use management.
According to GM Executive Director of Electrical Systems Micky Bly, “The Volt’s battery will have a significant capacity to store electrical energy, even after its useful life.” This means that after the eight-year/100,000-mile warranty offered on the Volt, the battery will still have energy that can be used for other purposes if the car’s battery is recycled. Therefore, GM’s ultimate goal through its partnership with ABB is to find a cost-effective solution that optimizes the entire battery life cycle and improves the efficiency of the country’s power grid.
Another car manufacturer that has begun to study the possibilities of recycling electric batteries is Nissan. Nissan has entered into a joint venture with Sumitomo Corporation to conduct research on used lithium-ion batteries. The joint venture, called 4R Energy, aims to ‘Reuse, Resell, Remanufacture and Recycle’ the electric batteries that power the Nissan Leaf.
The company is expected to conduct demonstration tests and undertake a commercialization study as it works to develop a business for using lithium-ion batteries as a second life.
Finally, California electric car manufacturer Tesla Motors has launched a research project with SolarCity, a national leader in solar energy design and installation, and the University of California, Berkley, to investigate the outdated possibilities of high-energy batteries. electric cars. The trio is developing a system that will combine Tesla’s electric car battery system with SolarCity’s monitoring platform to produce an advanced grid-interactive photovoltaic (PV) and stationary storage product that can be installed in buildings. The idea is that the battery storage created will collect excess PV power that the utility can use instead of using higher-emitting power plants.
So as the electric car race goes on, it looks like General Motors, Nissan and Tesla Motors will also compete in the electric car battery race. With ideas as big as renewable energy storage, smart grids, and backup power supplies for buildings, who knows where the second life of electric car batteries will end up.