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Too bad it just didn't happen to be easy. I would hold out some hope for recycling simply given that each Tesla model 3 size battery has 3,000$+ of raw material
by Aron 10y ago
Too bad it just didn't happen to be easy. I would hold out some hope for recycling simply given that each Tesla model 3 size battery has 3,000$+ of raw materials, and there will be literally billions of cells with identical design to recycle. I would find it an interesting fact of the world that it's cheaper to go back into the Earth's crust to get more than to somehow separate it out from a pre-existing source that is highly concentrated.
- klodolph 10y ago$3,000+ of raw materials is not the same thing as $3,000+ of lithium. The batteries are already recycled to recover the cobalt and manganese, which are valuable. The numbers I've heard suggest that less than 1% of the material cost is lithium, but that number sounds a bit low—maybe less than 1% of the total cost is the cost of lithium, perhaps. Battery grade lithium is around $5/kg.