With electric vehicle (EV) sales projected to grow rapidly in the coming years, the industry is preparing for an influx of used batteries. Many of these batteries will have reached the end of their useful life in a vehicle but still have potential for use in other applications. For any sort of second-life business model to work, there will first need to be a way to accurately assess battery history and current state of health. Once this is verified, the units can be passed on to the most appropriate second-life application, or in some cases, directly to recycling.
“If a battery is just a black box with a make and a model on it, you have no idea of the conditions under which it was used,” says Colin Fitzpatrick, Head of Department of Electronic & Computer Engineering at the University of Limerick (UL). “In this scenario, it’s hard to see any circular economy model taking off. The key is to harness the information that’s available on these batteries.”
