Making a battery for an electric vehicle typically requires mining hundreds of pounds of hard-to-extract minerals. That’s put a spotlight on batteries’ heavy environmental toll, at least upfront.
In the US, it takes about 25,500 miles of driving for an EV to break even, according to a BloombergNEF analysis. That payback figure, however, assumes that every EV is made with newly mined lithium, nickel and cobalt — as if all the materials will end up in a landfill at the end of a vehicle’s life. But that’s not what’s happening. EV batteries are simply too valuable to toss out, and a new industry of recyclers is busy snatching them all up.
The boom in renewable energy will make EVs even less polluting. Solar installations have set annual records worldwide for 22 consecutive years, and the pace appears to be accelerating, according to data from the International Energy Agency. By 2030, when the US grid is expected to get two thirds of its power from carbon-free sources, an EV built with recycled materials could break even on emissions in a matter of months.
Still, the world is already on track to recycle twice as much lithium-ion battery supply in 2024 as it manufactured in 2014. When considering the environmental toll of an EV, it’s increasingly important to measure the footprint of the materials going in and how it shrinks when some inevitably get a second life.