What Can We Do with 100GWh of End-of-Life Electric Vehicle Batteries? : BLOG: Battery Second Life for Electric Vehicle Batteries
Dr Na Jiao, a Technology Analyst, market research firm IDTechEx explains why there is great potential for end-of-life electric vehicle batteries to have a second life.
Batteries are the most expensive component of an electric car. Upon retirement, the electric vehicle batteries could still retain 70-80% of their initial capacity. Recycling the retired batteries is still at a cost today and entails extra energy and potential pollution.
Meanwhile, more and more companies are exploring how to extract value by repurposing a second-life for those retired but still capable car batteries in less-demanding applications such as stationary energy storage. Major automotive companies like Nissan, Renault, BMW and BYD all have launched various projects and business initiatives on second-life batteries.
In IDTechEx’s brand new report Second-life Electric Vehicle Batteries 2019-2029, a forecast is included on the available capacity from second-life batteries over the next ten years, together with a comprehensive analysis on the potential applications, current status of industrial implementations, the regulatory landscape, key technologies, business models as well as the value chain of second-life batteries.
Horses for Courses
By 2029, over 100GWh storage capacity could be provided by second-life electric vehicle batteries annually. Those retired batteries are just like new batteries but with degraded capacity to different degrees.
Therefore, the key is to match the ‘right’ batteries with the ‘right’ applications. In our second-life battery report, the potential markets for second-life batteries in both stationary and mobile energy storage applications are analysed.
Regional markets are also addressed in this report, for example, China Tower is now the biggest buyer of second-life batteries to use them as back-up power for their 2 million telecom towers across China. Besides, the government is now drafting the regulation on the four-wheel low-speed vehicles in China which is expected to reach 3 million sales by 2020. Second-life batteries could become the potential powertrain choice for those short-range, low-speed vehicles which are mostly using lead-acid batteries today.
The report analyses the current battery second use market landscape on the different industrial implementations in development by various stakeholders to date and aims to answer the following questions:
How much storage capacity will be available from second-life batteries over the next ten years?
What are the potential applications for second-life batteries to play a role?
What is the current status of battery second use implementations and who are the key players?
What is the regulatory landscape for second-life batteries?
What are the key technical challenges and how companies are developing technologies to overcome the challenges?
How to better innovate business models to extract more value from second-life batteries?
Read More
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