I don’t think they even had any concrete plans after shredding old batteries into that black goop. Afaik that speculatively collected that with the plan to start recycling once a viable way to do it cost effectively is discovered. From my perspective it was green washing more than anything anyway, seeing as it apparently still isn’t viable.
But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, seeing as the market for batteries is still growing. Recycling only really needs to be viable once enough lithium for “peak-lithium” is mined. If we start recycling now while still mining because demand is growing, that’s effectively not really different from mining more now and stopping earlier.
The economies of scale will look way different once degraded batteries from all the EVs being sold in the last few years start accumulating.
I don’t think they even had any concrete plans after shredding old batteries into that black goop. Afaik that speculatively collected that with the plan to start recycling once a viable way to do it cost effectively is discovered. From my perspective it was green washing more than anything anyway, seeing as it apparently still isn’t viable.
But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, seeing as the market for batteries is still growing. Recycling only really needs to be viable once enough lithium for “peak-lithium” is mined. If we start recycling now while still mining because demand is growing, that’s effectively not really different from mining more now and stopping earlier.
The economies of scale will look way different once degraded batteries from all the EVs being sold in the last few years start accumulating.