by MAURA KELLER
Electric vehicles and hybrid vehicles have made their mark on the automobile industry. Recycling companies are taking notice and evaluating what role these vehicles, and their corresponding parts, will take in the recycling industry in the near future.
According to the Auto Care Association, the U.S. registrations of hybrid vehicles totaled 4.1 million as of January 1, 2017, an increase of 9.5 percent over last year’s 3.7 million. That said, the number of hybrid vehicles sold in the U.S. peaked in 2013 and have fallen since then, both in numbers and in retail share. In 2013, 578,413 hybrid vehicles were sold, accounting for 3.8 percent of 15,383,000 total vehicles. In 2016, when hybrids ended the year at 2.9 percent retail share, Americans bought 17,422,000 vehicles with hybrids totaling 496,891.
Thomas Baker, a principal with Boston Consulting Group (BG) and co-lead of BCG’s green energy and environment sector in North America, says that while hybrids have hit a plateau of sorts, he expects electric and hybrid vehicles to significantly grow, especially for smaller (Class 1 & 2) vehicles in the next couple years.
“We will likely start to see the total cost of ownership of these vehicles become competitive with traditional internal combustion engines as a result of drastically decreasing costs of lithium batteries,” Baker said. “Additionally, we have observed the range of these vehicles increase and investments made in public charging infrastructure, which reduces the ‘range anxiety’ associated with an EV.”
And as far as the EV market’s effect on the recycling industry, Baker said that up to this point, there haven’t been drastic impacts as the market has been small and not that many vehicles have needed to be recycled.
“But moving forward it will be important for recyclers to build partnerships with automakers to understand how best to recycle batteries and deal with the potentially dangerous aspect of the technology – both chemical and electrical,” Baker said.
Rajit Gadh, PhD, professor, Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, at UCLA said that when an EV battery has lived its useful life in a vehicle, it still has several years of life left to be used as an energy storage device to help with grid objectives.
“This is an area that recyclers can easily develop – and they can exploit the massive growth in solar energy on the distribution grid and offer the used EV batteries (also known as second life batteries) as energy storage devices to manage and control the intermittency of energy generation that results from large amounts of solar on the grid,” Gadh said.
When a battery is discarded, it’s often the case that a large number of cells within the battery still have substantial life left, and each cell needs to be tested for potential second life use.
“By replacing a small number of cells, the recycler can extract significant value,” Gadh said. “This should be investigated before they dismantle the battery to break it down to its individual components or try to extract metals such as manganese, etc.”
Jason Vines, an independent communications and government affairs consultant has counseled General Motors on issues surrounding the Chevy Volt. Vines said that electric and hybrid vehicles have given recyclers a challenge due to the volatile batteries. “Remember, vehicles are, and have been, one of the most recyclable products on the planet for more than 100 years,” Vines said. “From my knowledge, the most prolific challenge for recyclers, concerning automobiles, continues to be plastics, incredibly prominent in vehicles for decades.”
Challenges Aplenty
While improvements are being made as described above, costs and range anxiety still represent some of the biggest challenges surrounding electric vehicles. “Also the lack of options for customers, as automakers haven’t fully launched electric/hybrid options for their fleet of vehicles,” Baker said.
Gadh said some additional challenges include:
•Lack of awareness of how EVs can lower greenhouse gases especially when using renewables and wind energy sources.
•Awareness about how EV battery can be a resource on the grid for future of energy storage.
•Potential shortage of lithium, which is the most common element in a battery, as the EV market grows.
•Shortage of public EV charging, workplace EV charging, and EV charging in multi-unit dwellings, as the numbers of EVs grow.
“This is an area we are researching actively,” Gadh said.
Experts say that the potential future growth of the market is the biggest trend for recyclers to be aware of.
“While there is still some time before a major amount of batteries will need to be recycled – likely 10 to 15 years based on the expected lifetime of a battery operation – the industry needs to be ready,” Baker said.
Battery technology innovation is happening at a very rapid pace and battery technology will continue to improve steadily in terms of kwh/volume, kwh/weight, power densities. That will result in EVs of the future being lighter, faster and more efficient than today.
Gadh said battery variations will also be significant as there will be increasing specialization of batteries for different needs such as buses/trucks, cars or bikes/scooters – each having different requirements.
“This means that we will have not only larger number of batteries but also a larger number of variations,” Gadh said. “Almost two decades ago we were doing research on designing products for disassembly – at the design stage itself to enable recyclability of products. Today, recyclers should start to think about working with designers so that the ‘re-usability’ of batteries is part of the design process itself.”
Fred Hubacker, managing director, Conway MacKenzie, has over 36 years of experience providing senior leadership, advisory and business development services for companies in the automotive industry.
Hubacker noted that all of the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) have announced major investments in the development of electric vehicles.
“The technology of pure electric vehicles remains a significant work in process, however, as battery costs, battery weight, and battery range remain very significant issues to solve,” Hubacker said. “For example, battery cost currently averages approximately $180 per kilowatt hour. The price has to come down to $100 for manufacturers to realize a profit on these vehicles. Currently the government is subsidizing this section of the market with incentives, including rebates.”
The other issue is infrastructure the U.S. will need a massive investment in electric charging stations across the country to maximize electric automotive potential. “We’re still many years away from this being reality,” Hubacker said.
So which states should recyclers pay attention to as it relates to hybrid and electric car usage? In its new study, iSeeCars.com analyzed over 22.5 million new and used cars sold in 2017 (and over 17.8 million cars sold in 2014) to determine which states have the highest percentage of alternative-fuel vehicles (defined as hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and electric vehicles), and which states had the largest increases in green car adoption from 2014 to 2017.
Key findings show that California fittingly has the highest percentage of eco-friendly car sales – almost three times the national average. Hawaii was surprisingly the fourth highest (ahead of eco-friendly Vermont) showing the strength of its sustainability plan. And states with appealing incentives for green car buyers had a strong showing on the list of states with highest green car adoption rates.
Published in the April 2018 Edition
