Item — HN Reader

I have questions about the environmental impact of EV batteries when it comes time to replace or dispose of them. I've read a few things, including an old statement by Tesla on the topic.[1]

> Tesla: "our lithium ion cells contain no heavy metals, nor any toxic materials. In fact, our cells and Energy Storage System, by law, could be disposed of by putting them in a landfill. However, we have no intention of landfilling our ESS." They go on to say a recycling plan is being implemented. Cool.

From an RoHS POV, sure, no heavy metals. But "no toxic materials" and "ready for landfill" blows my mind. Am I naive?

I'll assume Tesla is one of the Good Guys, but I predict worse players in the industry will take advantage of loose disposal regulations if there is short term benefit.

[1] https://www.tesla.com/blog/mythbusters-part-3-recycling-our-...

3 comments

People will buy completely wrecked Teslas for $5-20k just to extract and resell the battery modules. Each of the 16 battery modules from an S goes for about $1200 a pop. The secondary market will buy essentially any quantity of lithium cells if the price is below $200/kWh, no questions asked.

Recycling efforts are almost always for show. If a cell or module has at least 30% of its original capacity remaining, people will reuse it for stationary storage or weight-insensitive vehicles. Shredding and recovering cathode materials from lithium cells is about as economically nonsensical as recovering silicon from cell phones.

There is such a massive worldwide shortage of batteries right now that worrying about dumping them in landfills is beyond pointless. You may as well worry that we're throwing away too many gold bars.

Lithium-ion battery construction has been constantly changing since its invention in the 90s, but the basics have been the same rather consistently. The batteries are fairly universally "non-toxic" assortments of "light" metals and salts in organic (Carbon-based) solvents. (Lithium itself is Atomic Number 3 on the periodic table; it's an incredibly common light metal. Cobalt and Nickel in the high-20s are generally the highest atomic numbers you see in any of the battery formulas, and many of the compounds are "organic". Neither of which is a direct link between atomic number and organic nature to toxicity of the final compounds using it, see ethanol, but as a first order approximation it's an okay start.)

None of the big battery manufacturers (LG Chem and Panasonic are too other huge manufacturers to compare to Tesla for instance) are doing much at all different from Tesla.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#Environmen...

There is a lot of FUD spread over EVs right now. There seems to be a lot of people hating to see them branded as "green" technology. I think both the oil industry and the "return to nature"-type ecologists don't like this narrative, but from all I have seen, in terms of environmentalism, EVs are a huge step up.