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What happens to electric car batteries when they die?

I want to buy an electric car to help the environment, but now I’m worried that the batteries might end up in landfills. Are they recyclable?

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Hana Sabah · Updated on
Reviewed by Shannon Martin, Licensed Insurance Agent.
Electric vehicle
(EV) batteries are hard to dispose of. **Currently, the majority of them are recycled, but some are being used to store energy from clean energy sources. **That being said, the process of recycling them still leaves some parts unused, and only a small percentage are being reused as they are.
Though lead-acid batteries are mainly used in gas-powered cars, some are used as supplemental power in EVs. Because of the toxic materials within them, lead-acid car batteries are recycled at a much higher rate than lithium-ion batteries.
Lithium-ion batteries are used to power the majority of battery-powered EVs. They are made up of many raw materials like nickel, cobalt, lithium, and copper, which means recycling them could be a very beneficial practice.
It allows those valuable metals to be taken from the batteries, refined, and reused somewhere else, keeping them from being discarded and lessening the need to mine them. Though no one has been able to reuse 100% of the materials from EV batteries, companies like
Tesla
are getting closer.
However, the high cost of recycling them has caused others to try to reuse the batteries instead.
Despite no longer being able to power a car, many of these batteries still have the capacity to hold power. Companies like Enel Group and Powervault are running trials to see if using retired car batteries to store clean energy could be a worthwhile practice. This would work for both lithium and lead-acid batteries.
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MORE: Volkswagen Plans to Lease Used EVs to Recycle Batteries
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