In case you wonder

Aww man. The anti EV crowd and landfill conspiracy theorist are going to hate you. :B

I had no idea that this was being done. Thanks for sharing.

Much better than would have been expected. Curious as to the percentage of used batteries that are going there.

Wonder if there is any profit in a recycler in MD shipping old Prius batteries to Arizona? I doubt it.

Excellent! Unfortunately around here, they still go to land fills if you use the recommended local resources/methods. I'll have to look into this more!

There are a few of these companies operating now including Redwood industries, Li cycle and Tesla itself although tesla only recycled it’s own batteries and the sells the raw materials exclusively to Panasonic which makes them into more tesla batteries.

Lii-cycle is a Canadian company which operates primarily in Europe as well as an operation in Arizona and I think Kingston Canada. They are building additional North American plants though.

Redwood industries is their competitor which was started by an ex tesla exec.

The biggest challenge is getting batteries as vehicle batteries are lasting 4 and 5 times longer than they expected. Teslas new LFP car batteries are considered million mile batteries. And they have zero cobalt.

Interesting times.

And Tesla is building a BIG battery plant right up the road here in NC to build NEW ones...Nothing mentioned about recycle.

ferndaleflyer wrote:
And Tesla is building a BIG battery plant right up the road here in NC to build NEW ones...Nothing mentioned about recycle.

Teslas recycle operations are in Nevada. Always have been. But they only recycle their own which are very few.

Panasonic essentially does part of the process and tesla the rest. Panasonic utilizes the recovered materials. But there are very few batteries to recycle at this point so it’s not a continuous operation.

Yes so the real landfill culprit is the end user, not the EV/Phone/Tool manufacturer where the blame is placed.

Eventually may need a CRV deposit like on an aluminum beer can.

ferndaleflyer wrote:
And Tesla is building a BIG battery plant right up the road here in NC to build NEW ones...Nothing mentioned about recycle.

It’s the ‘Wally World Effect’ in play, lower prices everyday. No different than “Buy American” unless the offshore product is significantly cheaper that is.

It’s been the ‘dirty little green secret’ for some time now. Sure you can recycle Li batteries! But the end result is raw material to build new batteries that cost about 5 times what just mined virgin material costs.

The end result? The consumers (buying EV’s) and the bean counters (building EV’s) decision rules, cheaper is better, and more cheaper is more better.

Wait until people realize just how massive the buried / deferred taxes on EV’s will be, once it’s in their driveway it will be too late for second thoughts.