I feel this complete new sustainable economic system as we’re envisioning it, with all the pieces electrified, merely can’t work except you will have a closed loop for the uncooked supplies. There aren’t sufficient new uncooked supplies to maintain constructing and throwing them away; it might basically be inconceivable.
Battery recycling is an intuitive answer to these two points, however inform me extra concerning the technical problem of pulling it off, and the way it might work.
It’s extra difficult than I feel many individuals recognize. There’s only a entire ton of chemistry, chemical engineering, and manufacturing engineering that has to occur to make and refine all the elements that go right into a battery. It’s not only a sorting or rubbish administration drawback.
There’s plenty of room for innovation, and these items haven’t been nicely optimized, and even executed in any respect in some circumstances. So that’s actually the enjoyable stuff as an engineer, the place you get to invent and innovate issues that haven’t been executed two, three, 4 occasions already.
But one thing that isn’t intuitive is simply what a excessive stage of reusability the metals inside a battery have. All of these supplies we put right into a battery and into an EV don’t go anyplace. They’re all nonetheless there. They don’t get degraded, they don’t get compromised—99% of these metals, or maybe extra, will be reused repeatedly and once more. Literally a whole bunch, maybe hundreds of occasions.
I don’t consider we’re appropriately internalizing how dangerous local weather change goes to be.
JB Straubel
There will not be going to be plenty of electrical autos coming off the roads for a very long time. How are you eager about navigating that and going through shortages in your provide of used batteries?
I actually see our place as a sustainable battery supplies firm. One of our key goals and targets is to have a look at the very long run and to ensure we’re architecting essentially the most environment friendly programs for the long run, the place recycled materials content material is almost all of provide.
But within the meantime, we’re taking a practical view. We should mix in a certain quantity of virgin materials—no matter we will get in essentially the most environmentally pleasant means—to enhance the ramp-up whereas we have to transition away from fossil fuels.