It isn’t easy to recycle high-voltage batteries from electric cars, but Porsche wants to take a stab at it. The plan: extract raw materials from old EV batteries to make fresh ones for its own electric models.
The company announced last week that it’s embarked on a pilot project to figure out a recycling process that’s suitable to scale up.
“With the help of innovative recycling processes, we strive to increase our independence from volatile and geopolitically unstable raw material markets,” explained Porsche board member Barbara Frenkel.
Jann Höfer / cylib / Porsche AG
In the first of three phases, used electric vehicle (EV) batteries are shredded by powerful machines and processed into a granulate mixture called ‘black mass.’ This contains valuable materials including lithium, nickel, cobalt, and manganese.
Jann Höfer / cylib / Porsche AG
Next, the black mass is separated into individual raw materials needed to produce new batteries. Finally, a set proportion of these materials that are of the right quality and purity will be used to make batteries that will go in new electric Porsches.
The German automaker says it’s produced 65 tons of black mass thus far, and if it cracks this process end-to-end, this effort could advance its circular economy strategy. It will also help the company comply with European Union regulations which require car manufacturers to recover battery materials through recycling programs; in the case of lithium, there’s a stipulated recovery target of 80% by 2031.
Jann Höfer / cylib / Porsche AG
Hopefully Porsche will be able to figure this out, and show the way for other brands to follow. It’s said that while 95% of the materials in a lithium-ion battery can be retrieved, only 5% of EV batteries are being recycled in the first place. That sounds like an awful lot of money left on the table, and plenty of potential to reduce our need to mine for these valuable metals.
Source: Porsche