Honda has taken a one-percent stake in CATL as the company seeks a stable supply of battery cells and also closer cooperation in the areas of development and research as well as recycling and second-life approaches.

The British research project RaRE has set itself the goal of setting up a continuous supply chain to integrate recycled rare earth magnets into electric vehicles. Bentley is one of the companies involved in the project, which is led by HyProMag, a spin-off from the University of Birmingham.

The Swedish battery manufacturer Northvolt and the Norwegian aluminium producer Norsk Hydro announce the formation of a joint venture to enable the recycling of battery materials and aluminium from electric vehicles in the Norwegian market.

Honda is expanding its partnership in Europe with the French recycling specialist SNAM. In future, SNAM will collect batteries from Honda dealers and authorised recycling facilities in 22 countries and test them for their suitability for recycling and further processing.

The BReCycle project now launched, sees five research and industrial partners working on a closed-loop economic concept for PEM fuel cells. The aim is to develop a sustainable process for the treatment of fuel cells.

The European large-scale research initiative Battery 2030+ presents its roadmap to inventing the green batteries of the future. The Fraunhofer R&D Center for Electromobility at the Fraunhofer ISC in Wuerzburg coordinates the project that defines three key areas.

Canada’s Li-Cycle recycling company announces that it has completed its first commercial shipment of recycled battery materials. The firm says it can recover over 80 per cent of the elements found in lithium-ion batteries.

Fortum, BASF and Nornickel have signed a letter of intent to establish a battery recycling cluster to serve the electric vehicle market. The aim is to create a closed loop for the reuse of the critical metals contained in spent batteries.

Tata Motors has launched the Nexon EV in India and confirmed three other new electric cars coming in the next 24 months. The Indian Group is looking beyond EV manufacturing to include battery manufacture, charging infrastructure and building a battery recycling plant.

The Ecomotive team of the TU Eindhoven has presented another interesting concept car. Luca is an electric car that is consistently designed for sustainability. With lightweight construction and recycled materials, Luca is designed to conserve resources.

The Swedish company Northvolt, managed by former Tesla manager Peter Carlsson, will dedicate itself not only to the planned mass production of battery cells but also to recycling them with the Revolt programme now presented.

Volvo Buses aims to give its e-bus batteries a second life. In cooperation with Stena Property and Stena Recycling, the company will use its electric bus batteries as stationary energy storage in the Fyrklövern complex in Gothenburg.

British on-street charge point provider Connected Kerb and tyre developer ENSO have announced a strategic partnership. ENSO will supply end-of-life tyres to be recycled into Connected Kerb’s EV smart charging stations.

The Chinese Ministry of Industry has now published detailed guidelines for setting up recycling facilities for batteries of electric cars. The new regulations are likely to pose major challenges for some electric car manufacturers.

Umicore and LG Chem have entered into a multi-year strategic supply agreement for NMC (Nickel-Manganese Cobalt) cathode materials to meet LG Chem’s needs from Umicore plants in Poland, South Korea and China.

The Volkswagen-Northvolt cooperation is taking off as they launch a first pilot production for battery cells at Volkswagen’s Salzgitter plant. Production is to scale up to 16 GWh at the end of 2023 with Volkswagen investing around €1Bn.

Eramet, BASF and SUEZ are jointly promoting the ReLieVe (“Recycling of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles”) project. It aims to recycle batteries from electric vehicles and enable the production of new power packs in Europe.

Some of the battery cells for the next generation of the EQ electric cars from Mercedes-Benz are to be produced with renewable electricity. The carmaker has now agreed a sustainability partnership with Farasis Energy for this purpose.

The Chinese battery manufacturer CATL and its subsidiary Brunp Recycling are planning to set up a joint venture for cathode materials. In this way, CATL intends to broaden its own supply of important raw materials.

As pedestrian unhappiness about the onslaught of electric kick scooter fleets is mounting, Parisians have taken to throwing the scooters into the Seine to be rid of them. Now a startup called Guppy has emerged to retrieve the submerged scooters using magnets.

JT Energy Systems will be taking over the former Solarworld plant in Freiberg, Germany. The company was founded by Jungheinrich and Triathlon Holding at the beginning of 2019 and aims to create “the largest European production centre for batteries and charging systems in intralogistics”.

Toyota has just announced the cornerstones of a comprehensive battery collaboration with Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL). This includes not only a “stable” supply of CATL batteries for Toyota but also the development of new battery technologies and more.

A newly founded Technical Committee of the international electrotechnical standardisation organisation IEC will develop uniform standards for electric pedal scooters, monowheels and electric kick scooters starting in autumn this year.

Slovakian-based e-mobility company InoBat and Hungarian oil company MOL announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding to develop hydrogen projects. The focus will be on activities in Central and Eastern Europe.

The recently announced Volkswagen pilot plant for recycling electric car battery materials in Salzgitter, which will go into operation in 2020, is designed to initially produce 1,200 tonnes per year. The project in Salzgitter is to be followed by further recycling plants in the next few years.

Formula E enters a partnership with Umicore of Belgium to implement a battery recycling programme. The batteries from electric cars of the first two seasons of the electric racing series are currently processed by Umicore.

German forklift manufacturer and intralogistics specialist Jungheinrich and battery manufacturer Triathlon Holding have founded a joint venture. JT Energy Systems is to produce and recycle lithium-ion battery systems for both companies.

Volkswagen is now bundling all tasks relating to the development and production of batteries into its Components division, which has n0w assumed responsibility for all aspects of energy storage – from cell production to mobile charging banks, to battery recycling.

The battery of an electric car is often denigrated as rolling hazardous waste in circles still favouring the combustion engine. We were able to convince ourselves of the opposite at the specialist firm Duesenfeld that is disposing of the myth – Battery recycling works deep into the cell. It is only down to politics to […]

The U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) announced the establishment of a research and development centre for the recycling of critical materials such as cobalt and lithium from electric vehicle batteries for example. The aim is to reduce dependence on foreign resources.