5/3/2026 at 8:51:39 AM
I recently read an article about a company that develops technology for re-using worn-out EV batteries for grid storage. After all, your EV battery with 70% capacity would be useful for many years somewhere in the desert with thousands of other similar batteries, as large-scale grid storage. The technology was great, the business model was sound, grid operators were very interested, everything was fine, except… the supply of those EV batteries.Turns out those EV batteries do not degrade as quickly as we were repeatedly told (by black PR, my guess) and there simply aren't enough to go around :-)
EDIT: I can't find the original article, but I found this: https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2022/08/01/electric...
by jwr
5/3/2026 at 9:06:37 AM
I had a friend working on tech to recycle ev car batteries for household storage. One of the issues has been that the durability of these batteries is much better than people thoughtby fiftyacorn
5/4/2026 at 6:07:05 AM
It's well-understood in the Tesla owner's community that the battery is going to outlast the rest of the car. I think a lot of the "batteries go bad" beliefs started when hybrids first came out, and then it just got stuck in the public doxa.by roncesvalles
5/3/2026 at 7:07:40 PM
Redwood Materials is a major battery recycling company, probably the one mentioned.[1] They have a few moderate sized facilities using old EV batteries for grid storage, but their main business is extracting lithium from old batteries. They have a Battery Bin, placed at retail locations, where people can deposit old batteries, phones, and laptops. It has a fire suppression system.Like steel, this industry will probably settle down to where most of the materials are recycled. Over half of steel in the US is recycled, and Nucor, which is a steel recycler, is the US's biggest steel producer. Much of what's not recycled is lost as rebar inside concrete.
by Animats
5/3/2026 at 6:25:46 PM
New batteries have gotten so cheap it likely makes reuse of used batteries uneconomic.Average costs of a new utility scale system are around $125/kWh of which $75/kWh is equipment of which $40/kWh is the LFP cells.
https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/how-cheap-is-batter...
Existing batteries used in cars usually have more expensive NMC chemistries. Their nickel and cadmium are worth about $30/kWh alone. They’re possibly worth more recycled for their constituent metals than reused for grid storage.
by laurencerowe
5/3/2026 at 2:50:25 PM
The myths are insane, you will see them on here all the time.Evs are so heavy, wear through tires, good luck when you need to replace the battery. The resources to build it are bad for the environment.
It’s exhausting. It’s like those folks that complain about tax rates for the top brackets and they are making 60k.
by infecto
5/3/2026 at 6:30:33 PM
"The resources to build it are bad for the environment."Have you recently checked on how oil is produced?
And batteries from abundant materials are avaiable, lithium is just still cheap. But yes, exhausting.
by lukan
5/3/2026 at 7:38:51 PM
You missed that I was listing off myths.by infecto
5/3/2026 at 9:02:36 PM
Indeed.by lukan
5/3/2026 at 5:16:03 PM
>It’s like those folks that complain about tax rates for the top brackets and they are making 60k.You don't need to be rich to have economic literacy.
by vovavili
5/3/2026 at 5:40:24 PM
Yea but going back to the comparison to EV discussions. That’s not how this plays out. People have no thought and just latch on to ideas people feed them. There is no depth beyond the one statement.by infecto
5/3/2026 at 4:42:56 PM
The issue is that battery packs tend to fail abruptly, one cell in one module goes bad completely.So the worn out packs almost all have bad cells as well.
Its expensive to repair them because of how much dangerous manual labor is involved.
by buckle8017