Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene says the United States is “not ready” for the influx of electric vehicles (EVs) when they begin to be retired in the coming decades. Now, he was right.
Republicans said this in a tweet on Sept. 9, in response to an Epoch Times article that called electric cars “a ticking time bomb” and said that millions of people are expected to retire by 2030.
A Pew Research poll in May showed that Republicans or Republican-leaners are more likely to oppose EV incentives than Democrats or Democratic-leaners – 53% to 15%, respectively.
Electric cars don’t last forever and their use has exploded over the past decade. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA) Global EV Outlook 2022 report, in 2012 only 120,000 electric cars were sold worldwide. In 2021, more than that, more customers are sold every week.
In July, Graeme Cooper, head of futures marketing at UK power company National Grid, said most electric car batteries have a lifespan of around 15 to 20 years.
This means that electric car batteries are going to be a bigger problem in the coming years than they are now. Professor Fengqi You, from Cornell University, specializes in engineering and is the author of a 2021 research paper on the use of electric car batteries. He told Newsweek that a life expectancy of 10 to 15 years is “optimistic” and many could retire before that. Fengqi said, “Sooner or later, even now, we will start to face many problems with the batteries that are being repaired, and it is clear that we do not have a lot of resources now to deal with them,” Fengqi said.
Charlotte Hamilton, CEO of Conamix, an EV battery research firm, told Newsweek that the United States will be struggling with the large adoption of used EV batteries today. “There is no infrastructure in place to recycle these batteries and recover the chemicals, while at the same time we are pushing for more electric cars,” he said. “This is a huge breach of a trillion-plus industry, and it’s going to happen quickly.”
This is not just a problem for the United States. It is estimated that China will be stuck with 800,000 used batteries by 2025 and possibly more than 7 million tons by the end of the decade, Greenpeace East project manager Bao Hang told Newsweek Asia about free travel.
Currently, one of the problems is that many used batteries end up in the black market where there is no law, although the government is not working on this issue.
“The Chinese government has proposed several policy measures to control the recycling and use of electric vehicle batteries,” Hang said. “Chinese automakers are also accelerating the construction of ports to recycle spent batteries. 9,985 battery manufacturing plants have been built in China by September 2021.
“If the transition to electric cars accelerates, the number of batteries removed may exceed our original predictions. It is essential that the recycling of batteries and reuse of monitoring the pace of the accelerated EV transition. “
A Second Life
When talking about the use of the electric car battery, the industry experts sometimes refer to the “second life” of the battery, that is, its life outside the car once it is used.
A second life is possible because when an EV battery is removed it will still have about three quarters of its original capacity. This can translate into a significant reduction for the user, but for other purposes it is still very powerful.
“I think the second life for batteries is very important as the world goes to 100% electric cars, which will happen at some point,” Hamilton said, saying that it may be better to use car batteries . Retirement electric cars rather than renew them. component parts. “Once you recycle something completely and bring it back to the basic chemistry, you get rid of all that benefit — you still have a big battery that’s going to do something,” he said.
One of the obvious uses for used EV batteries is energy storage, Fengqi said. This can mean that the brush is used as security storage and home with the sunset or as security security for work or street.
According to the United States produces successful in the US, where it arrives at Ev EV uses at that time and send them? Do car manufacturers reuse them? According to Fengqi, not completely. “It would be good if they did it, because they have the resources, they have the power, they have the resources to do it,” he said.
“But in practice it is difficult because many manufacturers of these vehicles do not make batteries. They have different vendors in this space. Are these car makers, the bigger ones, making the batteries? Perhaps not. They buy batteries from third party suppliers, and use them to put their own brand on it. “And that’s why the business of recycling and using it hasn’t been successful at the moment unless there’s a lot of government work or incentives or a comprehensive policy, because it’s very expensive creating infrastructure.
Martin Bayntun, a spokesman for automaker Nissan, which has been producing its Leaf electric car since 2010, told Newsweek: “Nissan’s batteries are used in a variety of ways, including security for homes and businesses, as well as assisting with lighting and lighting. refrigerators and convenience stores. Other equipment includes industrial machinery such as forklifts and automated guided vehicles (AGV), which transport workers to factories. Nissan. “Recyclable batteries have even been used to provide backup power in stadiums and surrounding buildings in Amsterdam, as well as in Japan’s level crossings, where they provide reliable power for signals and in case of damage or during processing.”
Bayntun said that at the end of the battery’s “second life” period, they are recycled and their materials are released for use in future batteries. A spokesman said the company “plans to set up a battery recycling center in Europe and another in the United States, but did not say when. Newsweek has contacted the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for comment.
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