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Comment by danans | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised that the article didn't mention the intermediate use case of stationary storage, which can extend the life of batteries many more years before they need to be recycled for raw materials.

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This will only push the problem by a few years. After that recycling is still necessary.

Doubling the useful life of the battery is more than marginally useful. Reuse is much better than recycling when you can do it.

GP is still right -- eventually the batteries will need to be recycled or disposed of in some way.

It was the initial comment mentioning reuse that said recycling was necessary after reuse. So I'm not sure what that comment added to the discussion...

The problem with that argument is that with how long lithium ion batteries can be reused, there aren't any big lithium ion batteries at end of life, so it's too early to expect to see them being recycled yet. The first cars with these batteries are less than a decade old, so we're still probably a decade or 2 away from the point that there are enough big batteries reaching end of life that it's worth recycling them.

Batteries will last a good decade in vehicle use, then another decade for grid storage.

VW is already attempting to recycle 95% of their batteries: https://www.volkswagenag.com/en/news/stories/2019/02/lithium...

We've got 20 years to improve our recycling process from that. I'm not majorly worried.

Yes, there is a huge market for used batteries. Trick is to ensure they get put up for sale, because I'm sure the manufacturers are fearful a second hand market will devalue their product. ie. they will offer trade ins and free disposal rather than risk the battery equivalent of retread tires ending up on the market.

E.g. https://www.relectrify.com

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