Secondary Battery Life

 As the cost of batteries continues to decline rapidly, using energy storage to smooth load profiles will become increasingly attractive. Other applications include public fast chargers, depot chargers for electric buses and trucks, and residential settings where more EV owners combine rooftop solar panels and home storage. 

 The shift of electric vehicles into mainstream use has already disrupted the automotive value chain in significant ways and is now on the verge of disrupting the energy-storage value chain as well. The need to dispose of millions of EV batteries in the future has already led to the emergence of new recycling and reuse industries, creating new value pools with new potential to harness and integrate renewable power into our grids. 

 EV growth is not likely to cause large increases in power demand through 2030; instead, it potentially adds about 1 percent to the total and requires about five extra gigawatts (GW) of generation capacity. That amount could grow to roughly 4 percent by 2050, requiring an additional capacity of about 20 GW. Almost all this new-build capacity will likely involve renewables, including wind and solar power, with some gas-powered generation. 

Battery OEMs can intelligently select their end-of-life management pathway (that is, determining whether there is sufficient demand from applications suitable to remanufactured batteries or whether recycling would be preferable).  As demand for consumer products – such as electric vehicles, cell phones, and tablets – rises, the recovery and reuse of critical materials from spent and discarded lithium-ion batteries will be an essential component of any strategy to reduce product costs and reliance on foreign sources. 

 In the absence of directive regulation outlining whether recycling or reuse is the path required to avoid mass disposal of batteries, the stakeholders involved—including battery OEMs, second-life companies, automotive OEMs, and utilities—have an opportunity to shape the ecosystem. Not only can they identify the value-maximizing path between recycling and reuse, but they can also develop new business models to fully capture the value at hand 

 Battery-ownership models may evolve as well. Today, automotive OEMs and battery OEMs are comfortable relinquishing battery ownership to car owners. However, as second-life markets stabilize, owning the battery system will become more attractive due to the system’s confirmed residual value, which automakers and battery makers will not want to give away. Accordingly, we may see a rise in EV-battery leasing such that the automotive OEM or battery OEM can maintain ownership of the battery’s second revenue stream.