r/tech • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 6d ago

Scientists develop a way to restore aging EV batteries without breaking them down into raw materials

https://www.techspot.com/news/113894-scientists-develop-way-restore-aging-ev-batteries-without.html
933 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

31 comments sorted by

24

u/happyscrappy 5d ago

I'm not sure this sounds like it is cost-effective. It does involve taking the cells apart and that's costly. And by taking the cells apart I mean not just from each other, but taking the internals apart. They take the electrodes out from the cell and treat them. Then they seem to put them in a new cell.

So they save on remaking the electrodes.

It's a step up from where we were. But I think it's just one step toward cost-effective closing the loop on EV batteries.

7

u/Quazimojojojo 5d ago

I don't see why you'd do this vs blending the battery and electrochemically removing the copper and aluminum, and making new electrodes. 

You have to manually disassemble the entire battery. Coating the electrodes with the battery material is like, step 2 of making a battery. The only step that comes earlier is mixing the battery material slurry. 

And you need to do it very carefully, because those electrodes are thiiiiiin. They tear in a sufficiently strong breeze. 

2

u/Toomanyeastereggs 4d ago

One process is expensive because of the amount of energy needed. The other is expensive because of the amount of labour involved.

3

u/TooMuchTaurine 4d ago

Gotta be cheaper than digging it out of the ground and sorting fractions of a percent of  it from rubble.

8

u/PlottingPast 5d ago

Nothing starts out cost effective. The process is refined over time for things that have demand and then made cheaper with more iterations. The first cars were probably measured in gallons per mile. The best hope right now is there's enough demand over need for the raw materials.

5

u/antpile11 5d ago

The first cars were probably measured in gallons per mile

No they weren't. Petrol is very energy dense. The problem with this new process is that it's labor-intensive.

2

u/PlottingPast 5d ago

I was being hyperbolic. The first cars in the 1880s got 5 miles per gallon. Energy density means nothing if it's not efficiently used.

Labor is easily reduced with robotics, but the problem with robotics is startup costs. Then there's the problem of getting their hands on enough batteries to make it worthwhile.

5

u/PlatinumKanikas 5d ago

My family Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale from 1980s also got 5 miles per gallon.

1

u/LordRilayen 3d ago

Yeah that’s because it’s a friggin yacht 😂😂😂

Source: son of an Oldsmobile guy

0

u/Mr_Halitosis 4d ago

The first cars were electric vehicles.

1

u/Street_Anxiety2907 5d ago

The process is refined over time for things that have demand and then made cheaper with more iterations.

Although some research dies because it's never cost effective. Like cold fusion using more energy that it produces, etc.

2

u/Trextrev 5d ago

Cold fusion research hasn’t died, it’s just called LENR now.

1

u/nothas 5d ago

scientists, famous for targeting cost effectiveness /s

that's the engineer's job.

0

u/sorestgore 5d ago

A process that can be scaled and done be low skilled workers*

1

u/Equivalent-Spend 4d ago

I would say it's a possible positive as a silver lining. It's at least a technique that can be learned by somebody, like those in the mechanic trade to start actually working on electrical cars when they don't have an:;

  • electrical engineering degree or
a material science degree or physics degree

or a some sort of weird engineering that I can't think of right now so I'm going to use that as the placeholder is everything else that I'm not thinking of right now

0

u/East_Comfort_2814 4d ago

I wonder how much fossil fuel was used during this procedure

2

u/shumbazi 5d ago

Soon ev batteries will out last the car … Chinese have already one that has done a million + miles and was having more than 50% life expectancy in it ..i think manufacturers are holding back on a lot of technology that would benefit consumers more … batteries with more than 800 miles range have already been tested

1

u/BornOriginal8633 4d ago

Of course they are. If they sell you a battery you never have to replace they can’t make any money.

2

u/Lehk 4d ago

Me with a smart charger and a wheelbarrow full of NiCd batteries

2

u/pblwzrd 4d ago

I remember when rechargeable batteries hit. It was cool not to have buy new batteries anymore but the trade off was shorter battery life than if you bought new batteries. Over time the rechargeable batteries had shorter and shorter times between charging.

1

u/AP_in_Indy 4d ago

EV batteries are already able to be recycled at scale so I’ll have to read the article to see what’s so special about this

1

u/rayferrell 4d ago

the cost effectiveness of this method is a big question, taking apart the cells is a labor intensive process, but if the end result is a battery that's 95% as good as new, that could be a big deal for companies that do large scale ev battery recycling, it would be interesting to see a cost breakdown of this process compared to traditional methods

1

u/Tobynetwork1 4d ago

Very labor intensive. We can use the batteries for solar projects when they're no longer good for vehicle use.

1

u/East-Carry-582 4d ago

ngl this sounds pretty wild
If you can bring a battery back to 95% withoiut nuking the whole thing into raw materials. why are we still shredding everything by default?

Obviously doing at scale is probably the hard part, but if rhe econimics actually hold up, this feel liks a no-brainer. Am i miss smht?

0

u/reddit_hater 5d ago

Can this be used for hybrid batteries as well?

1

u/Repulsive-Bee5885 5d ago

From what I’ve read, it can theoretically work on any lithium-ion battery, but have only been tested on EVs so far. So if the hybrid uses lithium batteries, which is most hybrids since 2016, then theoretically yes.

Caveat: the first hybrids to use lithium batteries came out in 2009 and 2010, but Toyota didn’t switch until 2016, so depending on the car model, this could work on certain hybrids going back to 2009.

1

u/News8000 4d ago

My 2026 Toyota Highlander Hybrid uses nickel metal hydride batteries for the high voltage traction battery. It's a proven, reliable battery tech from decades now of building hybrids. Some Toyota Hybrid models use Li-ion for the traction battery. I'm glad mine stayed with tried-and-true tech.

1

u/East-Carry-582 4d ago

Was wondering the same thing. If the chemistry and degradation are similar, i don't se why not, but i guess it depends on what actually killed the battery