Mercedes-Benz opened a revolutionary electric vehicle battery recycling plant in October that will do away with almost all of the waste associated with used EV batteries, according to an Agence France-Presse report in Tech Xplore.
Recycling EV batteries isn't a new concept. Like most other batteries, even the small ones, they're not supposed to be thrown away. When in landfills, they can leach toxic chemicals into the soil. Under most recycling programs in the United States, it's a complicated process during which the used batteries change hands multiple times — and there's no doubt planet-warming pollution is released in the process.
And while mining the precious metals needed for EV batteries makes up only a fraction of what goes into harvesting dirty energy sources like oil and gas, there is still some unavoidable pollution that goes into it. (However, even with that unavoidable pollution, an EV is still cleaner than a gas-powered vehicle.)
Now, the new Mercedes-Benz plant, located in southwest Germany, will reduce the need to mine new materials. It will reportedly have the capacity to recycle 2,500 metric tons (around 2,755 tons) of material every year. According to Automotive Dive, the plant will be the first battery recycling facility in Europe to use a mechanical-hydrometallurgical process that will be able to recover up to 96% of the metals used in battery production, like lithium, nickel, and cobalt.
Ultimately, the recycling process will provide Mercedes with raw materials to produce more than 50,000 new batteries a year, per AFP.
Mercedes CEO Ola Källenius said the factory "marks a key milestone towards enhancing raw-materials sustainability."
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who attended the opening of the facility, said, "The circular economy is a growth engine and, at the same time, an essential building block for achieving our climate targets."
The recycling factory should also go a long way in helping Mercedes-Benz get ahead of stricter regulations on EV batteries that will go into effect in the near future. The European Union passed a regulation in 2023 that will eventually require batteries in newly sold EVs to contain 16% recycled content for cobalt, 85% for lead, 6% for lithium, and 6% for nickel, per Automotive Dive.
The facility is good news for Europe's EV sector, which has experienced a slump in sales in recent months, but that's a trend that appears to be turning around.
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