Business Insider JAN 2023 / by Alexa St. John / Read original article
One of the biggest challenges to the auto industry’s multi-billion-dollar push to electrify lies in the batteries. What happens when millions of used electric car batteries aren’t useful in a vehicle anymore?
Nissan’s latest move with a budding startup in the battery-repurposing space could be a solution to that looming problem. It might also answer concerns people have about the impact of EVs on the grid.
Nissan will work with Bay Area-based startup Relyion Energy to retire batteries from its well-known Leaf EV, Relyion announced Monday.
After all, used batteries are chock-full of valuable materials like lithium, nickel, and cobalt. And one estimate suggests that used batteries still have about 80% of their life left even after juicing an EV for several years.
But a lot of expense and resources were used to make functioning EV batteries. If it doesn’t make sense to tear a battery apart in order to recycle its materials once it can’t power an EV anymore, it could still be used in other ways.
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