Mercedes-Benz opened a revolutionary electric vehicle battery recycling plant that will eliminate nearly all the waste associated with used EV batteries in October, according to a report from Agence France-Presse in TechXplore.
Recycling EV batteries is not a new concept. Like most other batteries, even small ones, they should not be thrown away. In landfills they can leach toxic chemicals into the soil. According to most recycling programs in the United States, it is a complicated process where the used batteries change hands several times – and there is no doubt that it releases pollution to the planet.
And while mining the precious metals needed for EV batteries is only a fraction of what’s needed to harvest dirty energy sources like oil and gas, it still comes with unavoidable pollution. (But even with that inevitable pollution, an EV is still cleaner than a gas-powered vehicle.)
Now the new Mercedes-Benz plant, located in southwestern Germany, will reduce the need to source new materials. It will reportedly have the capacity to recycle 2,500 tons (approximately 2,755 tons) of material per 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 recovery up to 96% of the metals used in battery production, such as lithium, nickel and cobalt.
Ultimately, the recycling process will provide Mercedes with raw materials to produce more than 50,000 new batteries per year, per AFP.
Mercedes CEO Ola Källenius said the plant “marks an important milestone toward improving the sustainability of raw materials.”
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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 goals.”
The recycling plant should also go a long way in helping Mercedes-Benz come out ahead stricter regulations about EV batteries that will come into effect in the near future. The European Union adopted a regulation in 2023 that will eventually do that batteries needed in newly sold EVs contains 16% recycled content for cobalt, 85% for lead, 6% for lithium and 6% for nickel, per Automotive Dive.
The facility is good news for the European EV sector, which is a… limpness in turnover in recent months, but that is a trend seems to turn around.
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