Here's What Happens to a Tesla Electric Car Battery at the End of its Life

Queue anti-Tesla wingnuts:

"They don't make them here in the US, so they are bad for the environment!"

LOL! :D

"They don't make them here in the US, so they are bad for the environment!"

It's not like Japan's the least expensive place on the planet. I'm pretty sure that if there were competitive battery factories in the US, Tesla would have considered them.

Hammer mill? That poor little battery....just look at it!

Good to know that the Telsa does not require environmentally destructive roads or bridges to drive on. Also good to know that it does not require land and resources for parking either. Get real.

Stop the greenwashing. Stop giving free press to Tesla.

Richard Campbell, you are a hunter-gatherer living in the woods, right?

Quick Richard Campbell get off the internet. Think of the damage you are doing powering your computer.

Of course the big issue with Electric cars is the source of the electricity that is used to charge them, which is dangerous as it's a bit "out of sight, out of mind".

"Of course the big issue with Electric cars is the source of the electricity that is used to charge them, which is dangerous as it's a bit "out of sight, out of mind"."

Indeed, but I've seen some white papers on this. Even powered by coal, electric cars are cleaner than gasoline cars, especially if you consider that most are charged at night when coal plants can't shut down (too long to power back up again) and most electricity is wasted anyway.

In many regions, these cars would be powered by hydro or natural gas, which is cleaner than gasoline. Nuclear too, it could be argued.

and as the grid gets cleaner, so do the cars.

And nothing would keep you to switch to green power via your utility.

Much easier to clean up thousands of power plants than billions of individual cars.

So the batteries might not go straight from cars to recycling, but when they eventually do, Tesla will be working with Kinsbursky Brothers, Inc.(KBI)/Toxco to:

Will be working? I hope they planned out the life-cycle of their byproducts before hand.

"Will be working? I hope they planned out the life-cycle of their byproducts before hand."

I think they mean that they have partnership with them, and that they'll send the batteries to them to be recycled. Not that they'll start thinking about it then..

It is very common in the early commercialization phases of a brilliant sexy new product like the TESLA car to downplay the toxicity risks of certain components.

Allow me to point out the lithium salts are frequently associated with human reproductive hazards, so much so that females of reproductive age (might become pregnant on the job) are excluded from contact with them in the workplace. There is a reason that lithium salts are not given to pregnant females with mental disorders.

Toxicological issues like this are often in dispute, depending on who is making the analysis. The point being we need to know exactly which lithium salts we are speaking of - not the generic term. Additionally, we need to know, if there is a repro hazard of those salts, which low paid immigrant class of laborers will be cleaning up the mess and repairing and operating recycling equipment, washing down floors, etc.

Romantic feelings about cars to no cancel reality.

JL,

if they made the batteries out of potatoes, someone could still say that potato agriculture is bad. Nothing has zero impact, but I'll take lithium salts (which if there really is a risk with the kind they use, we need to address) over thousands and thousands of gallons of gasoline exhausting directly where people live.

"Will be working? I hope they planned out the life-cycle of their byproducts before hand."

I think this article is proof that they're thinking about it already.

"Of course the big issue with Electric cars is the source of the electricity that is used to charge them, which is dangerous as it's a bit "out of sight, out of mind."

The big issues with electric cars are still cost and range. The Miles XS500 is similar in dimension and capacity to my car and one of the least expensive non-NEV's, but even built at 3rd world labor rates will cost more than my car plus all of the fuel that I will ever put in it. A $30,000 car compact sedan is expensive in the US no matter how cheap it is to make it go.

ICE vehicles, because of their nearly limitless range are also flexible. A year ago an electric car would have served me adequately, but due to an involutary change in circustances, my commute to work has now and will be for several months until I am able to relocate, about 10 times what it was, and between low-population-density areas which are not now nor ever likely to beserved by public transportationand, and occasionally wlll be even more than that even after I relocate. An electric car would not always get me where I need to go every day, and alternatives are not always available.

"The big issues with electric cars are still cost and range."

Indeed. But do you remember how slow and expensive computers were a few short years ago? This is just the beginning, and there are more than enough early adopters for whom $30k is nothing. In fact, there are more than enough early adopters for whom $100k isn't a problem. It's these people that will make the price come down and performance go up for the rest of us.

Sadly, anonymous, it's been proven that batteries follow a far shallower curve than transistors per chip. But don't despair!

GL, the problem of range can be circumvented by another factor: Charge rate. Batteries based on nanophosphate lithium technology have been on the market in smaller applications for over a year now, and they have a C60 discharge rate. That means they can discharge their capacity in 1/60th of an hour, which also means that with an appropriate power supply and charging circuitry you can recharge them at a similar rate.

The Aptera pure electric vehicle being produced later this year is projected to have a 120 mile range. But if a few gas stations along your route added a mains-straight 3-phase high-wattage recharging stand--much cheaper than, say, a hydrogen pump--a 120 mile range would be plenty for a cross-continental trip.

In regards to 'lithium salts', if its in reference to lithium bicarbonate, the first-line treatment for severe episodes of mania (bipolar disorder), pregnant women should know

"Lithium should not be given during pregnancy without careful weighing of risk versus benefit. Lithium should be used during pregnancy only in severe disease for which safer drugs cannot be used or are ineffective. When possible, lithium should be withdrawn for at least the first trimester unless it is determined that this would seriously endanger the mother."

From: http://www.mentalhealth.com/drug/p30-l02.html

And know that 'Mild adverse effects can occur even if serum lithium levels are 1 mmol/L."

So would individuals handling lithium batteries be exposed 'enough' to have even mild adverse effects?

Richard Campbell could be someone who walks/bikes just about everywhere.

this is not impossible, even in suburbia.

but certainly, what will the environmental impact of the parking spaces be? what about noise pollution? cars are so inefficient in terms of land, money, and time that the mass "private" automobile could only exist as it does today with massive forced government subsidy. if you really want to save the environment, be for privatization of the roads, or at least charging drivers user fees. a "green" car under the current socialist roads is a contradiction in terms.

Why anyone cares about Tesla batteries per se, when they are in no way associated with Tesla remains an utter mystery. Even more of a mystery is why anyone thinks it has any importance what the Tesla battery pack cells end up doing - these things are totally commercialized and occur in th emillions - the thousands that the Tesla corporation is using is completely insignificant and of no importance. Let's not let green thought devolve into irrelevancies. The general public thinks we're
whacko already for making the Tesla sound important , a car whose production numbers are so tiny that any good effect it might have with a year's production will be wiped out by one hour's production of one of China or India's 15 car brands. The Tesla, quite frankly, is irrelevant. I'm
sick of hearing nonsensical claims to the contrary.
Get real, folks , and stop the hype.

Yeah, like most of the people that have ever lived or ever will live, I walk and bike almost everywhere. This "age of the automobile" is just a short blip in our history. The rest of the world is investing in high-speed rail and public transit. The US is behind and getting further behind. What is sad is that most don't even realize it. Everyone is too distracted by shiny objects like the Tesla.

Time to give up the fantasy that the electric car will give the automobile a future. There are just too many people for that to be possible. There is probably enough resources on the planet for everyone to have a computer but not enough for everyone to have a car.

This is good news for the one Tesla Roadster actually on the road.

thomas, you're missing the big picture.

Yeah, cell phones in the 80s were irrelevant big expensive bricks. Yeah, computers were slow, expensive and irrelevant to most people not long ago.

The Tesla is important because it shows it can be done, done well, and soon their volume will increase quite a bit when they come out with their second and third model (and when other companies come out with their EVs).

What happens to batteries is crucial. The Tesla batteries is just an example.

I work in a town that has NO public transportation. (no trains, no buses no subway) I do not choose to lvie in the town that i work in ebcause i wrok in the mental health field and living in a small town where I know all the mental health issues of the children in the area is not a good idea.
However I'm posting because there are tons of cities like this across the USA (and I even live in Massachusetts, which has a T system which extends through much of the state). People in places like these need to be able to drive to work, adn It is a step forward to have them driving to work in electric cars. Taking steps forward is green. It may not be green at it's absolute best, but this site promotes green initiatives, and steps in the right direction, and not just perfect examples.
The green initiative needs people to start taking steps otherwise it's just going to be people complaining about the inevitable collapse.

This "age of the automobile" is just a short blip in our history. The rest of the world is investing in high-speed rail and public transit. The US is behind and getting further behind.

Actually Richard, the rest of the world is just beginning their automobile revolution. With the introduction of the affordable Tata Nano in India, and the exponential increase of automobiles in places like China, the US will soon be surpassed as the number one car culture country.

I agree that we need a much better rail system, but it's hard to compare the European or Japanese rail systems to ours, when our country is many times larger.

And as for "destructive roads and bridges to drive on" where do you ride your bike? How do you cross bodies of water? Do you hop off and ford the river?

thomas C gray - you're right that Tesla uses standard battery technology, but here's an interesting stat: just ten thousand electric cars will need as many batteries as all the laptops produced by Dell in a year. Whether it's Tesla or another manufacturer, it won't take much volume for electric cars to be a major player in the battery market.

I'd rather they're built with batteries than with E85, hydrogen or biodiesel. It'll be cleaner, safer, more direct, more efficient and less complicated.

Not as much maintenance involved when there are vastly fewer moving parts. I just wish Tesla would get to mass production instead of screwing around with 300 cars a year.

It would probably drop the price to say, $60,000 USD at which point some members of family would be buying it. I'm personally going straight for my yacht though.

So now we are worrying about how the Tesla Batteries will eventually be disposed of someday when zero numbers of the car are yet to even hit the road yet? And at their cost only a few hundred will be sold? Meanwhile thousands of gas guzzling co2 spewing cars are sold every day leaking oil and they too have to be disposed of..... c'mon people

It seems to me that many comments are from people who are uninformed and rely only on what they read in the press. Or believe they have the correct thought patterns on a subject.What they do not have is the behind the scenes not released new technology. History is full of uninformed people making statements based on their own limited knowledge. Even learned men had wrong opinions. For example.. If man travells faster than 60 miles an hour his heart will stop beating...There is no energy in an atom...etc etc. The electric car is the car of the future, hybrid is over, biofuel cannot produce enough. The Tesla is showing what can be done with electronics. There is less pollution overall producing and disposing of a Tesla type electric car than a conventional car.
Why do people knock new ideas. Its seems us humans have a side of our brain that just loves to be negative. Lets see what happens, my money is on electric.

Too Bad What Goes on at the HammerMill & then Smelting
isn't explained just like how those Metals are handled from Mother Earth to be Used in Those Batteries with Mining Act in Ontario for Example over 100 years OLD
We Thought Some Vetting of these Stories were done before Being here on TreeHugger but alas No as this is the 2nd one We've Checked on in Less than a Month

Time to finally update Ontario's 135-year-old Mining Act Canada

Their six-month jail sentence, imposed by an Ontario Superior Court judge on grounds they were preventing mining exploration on land they claim north of Thunder Bay, has done more to publicize the unfairness ...

- The KI-6 may not be household names in Canada, but the six imprisoned residents from the First Nations community of Kitchenuhamaykoosib Inninuwug in Northern Ontario may well force the provincial government to finally update its 135-year-old Mining ...

Related Topix: Thunder Bay, ON, Canada, Ontario, Joe Handley, Peterborough, ON, North America, World News, Dalton McGuinty

http://www.topix.net/world/canada/2008/04/time-to-finally-update-ontarios-135-year-old-mining-act-canada

http://www.topix.net/world/canada/2008/04

Not enough resources for everyone to have a car? Sorry, but there is plenty of energy on this world for all 7 billion of us to own a car. Wejust need to use it better. It may be take a couple of decades before we have built the systems to do it well, but it is certainly possible. The U.S. energy consumption in total (cars+electricity+heat+energy wasted due to inefficiency) is about 4 terrawatts. Of this about 70% ends up being wasted, never used. This number could be greatly reduced if a)our power generation, in power plants and in cars, was not based on inefficient heat engines, and b)we implemented more cogeneration systems and/or a grid that lost less energy between the plant and the end user.
Which means that in principle, with substantial gains in efficiency using realistic technologies (and without having to violate thermodynamic limits) the world would need

This story was great.

Electric cars will be the greatest thing that ever helped nuclear power there ever was. Nuclear generated electricity will even be used for the hammer mill that pounds those batteries to pieces.

Nuclear resources are essentially unlimited so in a few years we'll all be zipping along in our battery powered cars.

The air will be cleaner. The grass will be greener. And the anti-Nukes will have learned to be less meaner!

lithium issues? dont eat the batteries. issues with the roads/infracstructure that cars use? ...... your using a generator attached to a stationary bike to power your computer......right?..... i sure hope so.

its still better than dependence on forgein oil and the Bush Family Plan.

enjoy!

terry

What we need is a totally new technology and life-view. What we'll get is hybrid automobiles and alternative fuels, and an industry controlled by the same old tired oil companies, and manufacturers. Why? They have the bucks and lack of morals to buy it from Congress and the White House; and to cram it down our throats. What we need is totally new. Twenty years ago I worked downtown, and was a single parent. I went over my stats for two years, and there were spikes in my production figures; the spikes occurred during summer, spring vacation, and Christmas. When I worked at home, rather than spend 57 minutes in a car to go 8 miles (we didn't have mass transit really, and my daughter had to go to school.) I showed my report to my boss. "So, what do you want? Work at home? Forget it. You're an example. You're someone to show off." Customer never came in; they didn't care where I was (the biggest deal I ever did was from a payphone in a rest room); they just did business. Get rid of the thinking. Go down to the gas station, take the compressed air hose and put it up to your ear. Now press down, and clean all the crap that the bogged down minions have been brainwashing you with. Picture a new way of looking at things, life, work, transportation. Stop reinventing.

This constant push for battery operated cars is non-sense. Ever notice how there is always a wait list for the Prius? You want to know why they are never in stock? They can't make the batteries fast enough to supply the cars that are on the assembly line. That's why none of the electric car companies can produce more than a few thousand. Also I find it peculiar that a bunch of people who are pushing for environmentally sound cars would push electric cars over conventional cars. Did you know that the battery plant that produces the batteries for the Prius is devoid of life and that NASA actually uses it to test space rovers? People think that that is more environmentally friendly than cars that emit C02 which is naturally abosrbed by trees? Yes it is true cars actually have helped INCREASE tree growth. That only makes sense right? More plant food = more plants. Also it's amazing to me to hear the constant push for public mass transit. It only works where population density will support. Mass public transit in cities such as SF and NY make sense because it is more efficient than that many people driving cars around. When you get to a city like LA where everything is sprawled out, it makes no sense because the time it takes to get from one side of town to the other will be ridiculous. I live in a city just outside of LA and a 7 mile round trip takes nearly 2 HOURS! If I depended on the bus lines, I would never be able to get anything done. The ridership will never get up to breakeven for just this reason. Cars are here to stay whether we like them or not.

Mark, please cite your sources.

As far as I can tell, all you've said is either a lie or misleading half-truths.

Actually Mark, LA is seeing an immense amount of new transit--that is working. What you're describing is low quality transit service: infrequent and unreliable. With rapid buses, dedicated rights of way, and frequent service, buses can work in most places--especially LA which has an enormous population and areas with relatively high density.

I would worry more about thermal runaway (Cobalt & Magnesium) than the fact that these can be recycled!

Once you blow up Brad Pitt or George Clooney your corporate charter is cancelled.

What you're describing is low quality transit service: infrequent and unreliable. With rapid buses, dedicated rights of way, and frequent service, buses can work in most places--especially LA which has an enormous population and areas with relatively high density.

Interesting article, but I'm still not convinced about the electric car. It's a fine idea, but I doubt it will take hold for 2 reasons:

1. Range less than 500 miles

2. Inconvenience of forgetting to plug it in

The internal combustion engine is just (unfortunately) too convenient. It is reliable, quiet, and easy to refill. You don't need an advanced degree to fix one, and it's parts can be swapped out at little cost.

The electric car is a great idea, but that is where it will stay, IMHO. Many people have pinned their hopes and dreams on electric cars, and I don't mean to dash those hopes and dreams-- it's pretty to think they will come true. The fact is, though, the internal combustion engine is here to stay. After gas runs dry we'll rely on biofuels, and after biofuels we'll rely on biosynthetic fuels. The technological advancement to pin your hopes and dreams on are more, and more efficient, trees.

Amazing. We either are for it , or against it. No happy medians on this group, the same as many others. I too think that electric vehicles are the wave of the future. Just too bad that they didnt "take" in the early 1900x when they first came out. Too little technology and too much inexpensive oil then.

No matter our technology, or fuel, we are going to leave a footprint upon the earth, and we must decide, in advance, what it will be, and which one will be the least destructive. Nuclear was mentioned and supported. YUKK--- I can only ask one question, which should put that one to sleep. Where and how are we to treat spent nuclear fuel? Ive toured Nuclear power plants with the great and enticing "tourist" showplaces. My question: What are you doing with the spent fuel? And their response" TRUST US we are taking care of it. Yeah, they are. I saw buildings where they are storing the stuff in barrels of it - in future hope thee will be a place to bury it "out west". Guess what - those people "out west" dont want it. I do not want it passing by my house on the highway, or railroad tracks, and I certainly dont want it flying overhead in planes. I dont want it buried "safely" underground, where in 20 -100- 10,000 years it is likely to leak into underground water storage and wind up as someones breakfast poison. Yeah, real clean - in 20,000 years (or is that 2,000,000?

It was mentioned that its easier to make a few thousand power plants cleaner, versus a few million automobiles, and that is certainly true. But where does the fuel come from, or what is used to power those plants? And even though they may be cleaned up, what about the coal mines, oil fields, gas wells, hay fields, etc. that supplies the fuel for those facilities. How about the damage to the atmosphere from the production of that fuel? The expenses and offset costs to provide and deliver it to the "burning point'?

Yes - we need to make some major decisions, right now! The time line is quickly running out and those should have been made and begun 50 years or more ago. They were not - because they too felt "someone" will do it "some day". Today is late. Tomorrow may be too late for recovery, of the health of this world.

Electric powered transportation is not new technology, it has been around longer than the internal combustion engine. Is it really a greener form of transportation? Maybe if the source of electric power generation is green.

But what is green power generation? hydroelectric? Nuclear? Most power generation in the US is still fossil fuels in one form or another because it is still the cheapest form of energy.

the benefit of the electric car is its better energy efficiency. with the same amount of raw oil we might get twice as far. this is good. but the point will be more where this energy should come from after the oil age. nuclear energy with its unsolved waste problem will most probably no a clever way to go. renewable energy will not be able to deliver enough anytime soon. afaik about 30% of all our power is used for individual traffic. creating alternatives to individual transport (= public transport) is much more important than dreaming about battery powered cars as a simple solution. we need to save energy in every possible way. better, denser city planning can save a lot of miles and hours spent in cars. this also can massively improve the quality of living. a new concept for transportation has to put all numbers on the table and consider all possibilities of a radically more efficient use of resources. changing the source of energy will not bring much change. making a life without cars possible will...