A strange myth surrounds electric car battery recycling. Quora has it. One person posted a consistently inaccurate answer claiming that EV batteries could not be recycled. They also supported the claim with many citations. These citations, when you read them, focused on the difficulty of recycling alkaline batteries and not EV lithium. It’s been in anti-Tesla hit articles.
EV lithium ion battery packs are extremely recyclable. Tesla even has a massive recycling program. A lithium ion battery pack contains incredibly valuable metals.
Car battery packs don’t cost much because Elon Musk sits in his office and strokes a white cat, saying “ho ho ho! Let’s soak people on battery packs!” The materials in the battery packs are still valuable even after they have been used up. It is much easier to extract cobalt and lithium from these:
More than this:
Yes, the car batteries can be recycled. No, the batteries aren’t piling up. The photos you sometimes see with articles about how terrible EV battery recycling is, photos like this:
are dishonest. These are household alkaline batteries, not car lithium batteries!
If an article claims that car batteries cannot be recycled and includes a photo like the one below, then you are lying.