Sales of electric cars and plug-in hybrids have grown rapidly over the past two years. Several manufacturers, including Audi and Porsche, have already announced that they will be focusing their development and production mainly on battery-powered vehicles. Sounds like we are finally moving into a greener future. But what happens to the battery of an e-car after it has served its purpose?

Fortunately, the market for suppliers who give batteries a second life or recycle their raw materials (Nickel, Cobalt, Aluminum, Graphite) is growing.

EV batteries have a tough life: Subjected to extreme operating temperatures, hundreds of partial cycles a year and changing discharge rates, EV batteries are designed for ten years lifetime, but degrade strongly during the first five years of operation. Even if they do not meet the EV performance standards any longer, these batteries are still able to perform sufficiently to serve less demanding applications, such as stationary energy storage services.

The still intact cells of used battery packs will be reused in order to store excess energy from wind, sun, hydropower or geothermal energy. One single battery of an electric car stores more energy than is usually required for a buffer in a family household. The batteries can also be dismantled and assembled into smaller battery modules for less demanding applications such as power tools, forklifts or e-scooters.

At Intertek, our EMC department has already received some requests from start-ups, which use former EV batteries for producing power banks or home/industrial storage systems. We are looking forward to further inquiries from this new market share to support a greener future.