How Green are Electric Car Batteries?

You don’t have to look too far to find electric car sceptics. In our blogs, you’ll find comments on a whole manner of myths. We’ve already blogged about how environmentally friendly electric cars are as a whole, but what about the batteries? That’s right, today we’re asking, “how green are electric car batteries”?

Two Things…

I’m an EV buff. I went electric at the end of 2011. Before my EV transition, I was a Land Rover buff. In all honesty, I still am. I could happily argue and present facts that showed a Toyota Prius is shockingly bad for the environment, whereas an old Defender is simply superb.

This was because, in those days, Prius batteries went straight to the landfill. Of course, so did the drivers, as you had to pretty much give up on life to drive one. With bigger batteries on pure electric cars is this an even bigger problem?

Before We Look at End of Life, Let’s Look at Start of Life.

At the start of its life, a car battery is not a huge, oversized block as you may imagine. Rather, it’s a whole series of small cells. Almost like thousands of traditional AA batteries packed together. Most of these batteries will last around 10 years. After that point, they are still about 70% effective, which is pretty impressive! Some of the first electric cars batteries are actually being reused in power wall and solar farm setups!

The issue is that, at some point, they will cease to be efficient. So, what happens then? Fifteen years ago, Prius batteries were being sent to landfill, is this still the case?

Priuses aren’t the Only Villains here…

So-called “self-charging” hybrids commit another huge crime here. They CAN be recycled but it’s not cost-effective to do so! With electric cars, the economic argument is outweighed by the green benefits. Currently, several companies will “partly” recycle batteries. They do this by incinerating them and then breaking out anything useful that remains, not overly green, is it…

More and more companies are creating the technology we’ll need in 15 years. Perfect for when the current crop of larger capacity EV batteries starts to be recycled.

Let’s look at Duesenfeld, a company in Germany.

They have pioneering approaches where they strip back batteries and remove the residual power to help power the process. Then, they strip out the electrons and recycle almost all of the core components. They’re not only recycling but also reducing the need to mine for new materials. Of course, the technology is still in its infancy. Although, it is being used today despite an incredibly low number of batteries available. The growth will be huge in the future!

We can accept that it’s not 100% efficient. Though, you can argue that it is more efficient than recycling the moving parts in a petrol engine! Plus, electricity is more efficient and cleaner to make! Along with electric motors being more efficient at extracting energy, the technology is as remarkable as electric cars themselves!