Electric car batteries “retire” at the latest after five
years in use. At that moment they still retain about 80% of their charge and
discharge capacity yet they are no longer valid for such a demanding
environment like the car, which is why they are scrapped and hardly any of
their materials are recycled.
In this context the Basque research centre IK4-IKERLAN is
leading ‘Batteries 2020’, the first European project that is seeking to improve
the batteries of electric vehicles and, once they can no longer be used for
this purpose, to take advantage of their storing capacity by giving them a
second lease of life as accumulators for renewable energies.