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What worries me is lack of concrete plans built into the master plan for recycling. The only mention I found was “ In the 2040’s, recycling will begin to meanin

What worries me is lack of concrete plans built into the master plan for recycling. The only mention I found was “ In the 2040’s, recycling will begin to meaningfully reduce primary material demand as batteries, solar panels and wind turbines reach end-of-life and valuable materials are recycled. Although mining demand will decrease, refining capacity will not.”. There needs to be an integrated plan to not only prevent industrial by product pollution but reduce it over the years.

mjamesaustin 4y ago
Tesla is already recycling 92% of its battery cell materials, but the low volume is mainly because people are not turning in their batteries for recycling yet. As the EV fleet ages, this number will steadily increase. https://electrek.co/2022/05/09/tesla-increase-battery-recycling-capacity-battery-packs/ https://electrek.co/2022/05/09/tesla-increase-battery-recycl... This master plan has a section dedicated to the estimated curve of material demand based upon recycling. It shows a large initial increase followed by a leveling off and then eventual dramatic decrease, as a result of battery retirement and recycling.
- elif 4y ago
  I dunno my old chemistry 2012 leaf battery is still going strong at about 80% capacity. It hasn't seemed to budge a km in the last 5 years.
mlindner 4y ago
There's already several cash flow positive companies doing lithium ion battery recycling. You need to keep in mind though, that recycling, at this point, recycles mainly batteries from smaller products, hybrids or very very early EVs (or EVs that were totaled). There are almost zero EVs that are at end of life at this point. Tesla doesn't need to be getting into battery recycling if there's already companies doing it and are competing for that revenue source. I believe Tesla already works with such battery recycling companies who buy up Tesla's old batteries. It's not Tesla doing it, which is why they don't make big mention of it.
alfor 4y ago
It’s not a very meaningful problem now, scaling is. If you have a growth of 50% per year (Tesla) it mean that the 20 years recycling is 1.5*20 = 3325X less. I hear that most of the recycling is from scrap production, if you have a 1% defect rate you have 30X more recycling from new production than from 20 year old batteries.

mjamesaustin 4y ago

Tesla is already recycling 92% of its battery cell materials, but the low volume is mainly because people are not turning in their batteries for recycling yet. As the EV fleet ages, this number will steadily increase. https://electrek.co/2022/05/09/tesla-increase-battery-recycling-capacity-battery-packs/ https://electrek.co/2022/05/09/tesla-increase-battery-recycl... This master plan has a section dedicated to the estimated curve of material demand based upon recycling. It shows a large initial increase followed by a leveling off and then eventual dramatic decrease, as a result of battery retirement and recycling.

elif 4y ago
I dunno my old chemistry 2012 leaf battery is still going strong at about 80% capacity. It hasn't seemed to budge a km in the last 5 years.

mlindner 4y ago

There's already several cash flow positive companies doing lithium ion battery recycling. You need to keep in mind though, that recycling, at this point, recycles mainly batteries from smaller products, hybrids or very very early EVs (or EVs that were totaled). There are almost zero EVs that are at end of life at this point. Tesla doesn't need to be getting into battery recycling if there's already companies doing it and are competing for that revenue source. I believe Tesla already works with such battery recycling companies who buy up Tesla's old batteries. It's not Tesla doing it, which is why they don't make big mention of it.

alfor 4y ago

It’s not a very meaningful problem now, scaling is. If you have a growth of 50% per year (Tesla) it mean that the 20 years recycling is 1.5*20 = 3325X less. I hear that most of the recycling is from scrap production, if you have a 1% defect rate you have 30X more recycling from new production than from 20 year old batteries.