The electric vehicle battery industry is evolving—offering cheaper batteries made of different materials and, for older batteries, greater recycling capacity and improved mining practices—even as EV makers scale back on production goals.
EV manufacturers like Ford, Mercedes-Benz, Rivian, Tesla, and others have lately been offering vehicles powered by less costly lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries, rather than the historically prevalent nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) and nickel cobalt aluminum oxide (NCA) chemistries, reports Canary Media.
That change has a number of trade-offs. For one, LFP batteries have lower energy density and a shorter potential driving range—a key consideration for EV buyers, even if most only drive short distances. However, they are also more durable in environments with heat and high voltage, making them less susceptible to the fires that have been a concern for EVs with lithium ion batteries onboard.
LFP batteries are also likely to perform less well in cold weather—though Sunoj George, the director of battery engineering and propulsion architecture at Rivian, told Canary Media that with the company’s thermal conditioning system, customers “should not see any perceivable difference” between an LFP and other batteries in cold weather.
But the shift in chemistry also means that LFP batteries can avoid sourcing materials from conflict zones. Mining nickel and cobalt for NMC and NCA batteries often raises serious environmental and humanitarian issues in areas where they’re sourced, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Myanmar.
The materials for LFP batteries are also less scarce, meaning the EVs that contain them are more affordable—with the caveat that recycling the batteries fetches a lower return and therefore offers less incentive.
According to a new study published by the International Energy Agency (IEA), expanding battery recycling capacity could reduce the overall scale of mining needed to supply critical minerals by 25% to 40%. The IEA’s research uncovered more than 30 new policy measures on recycling that have been introduced in the past three years, and if they’re all realized, the market value of critical minerals recycling could reach $200 billion by 2050.
“Expanding recycling can have positive knock-on effects for energy security by reducing reliance on imports and building up reserves to mitigate against future supply shocks and price volatility,” the IEA writes.
And significantly, “on average, recycled critical minerals incur 80% less greenhouse gas emissions than primary materials from mining, and help prevent waste of end-use technologies ending up in landfill.”
Alan Young, co-founder of Canada’s Materials Efficiency Research Group, said changes in the industry have forced mining companies to adopt safety and environmental reforms. He said the industry is better off for it, and forward-looking companies should keep on embracing a circular economy that recycles battery materials, reports InvestMETS.
“Needless to say, the final products that emerge from [traditional mining] production systems are often dwarfed by the vast quantities of resource inputs that ultimately are treated as waste,” he told the IMARC 2024 conference in Sydney, Australia in October.
As a result, “the majority of a mining company’s actual business is managing all of the other resource inputs that it takes to make that high value byproduct,” he added.
“This reality suggests that there needs to be a very careful and creative approach to how all these waste materials are being used, transformed, or disposed of, in order to minimize liabilities—current and future—and to identify where a waste can be re-purposed as a resource, either onsite or offsite, with upstream or downstream partners.”
