In large swaths of the United States (and, presumably, most of Canada) road salt will destroy most cars long before the drivetrains are worn out. Collisions al

In large swaths of the United States (and, presumably, most of Canada) road salt will destroy most cars long before the drivetrains are worn out. Collisions also destroy a significant number (in some cases partially destroying the drivetrain too, but not always). In both cases the drivetrain almost always gets disassembled for parts unless there's something really unimpressive about it. Pretty rare to see a car body go into the crusher with the engine still in it unless it was a bad frontend wreck, at least in my experience. Electric vehicles will be subject to the same body rust and general degradation issues as combustion cars, and it's not obvious that the residual value of a battery pack is going to be that much higher than the residual parts value of an engine in a rusted-out but otherwise operable gas car. We'll see, I guess, but it doesn't seem on the surface like the economics are likely to be all that much different on the scrap / recovery side of the equation. I suspect that supply chain and labor costs will dominate the price of used batteries rather than the lithium metal itself.