Battery recycling: After the end of a vehicle’s service life
Volkswagen's decarbonisation strategy extends far beyond the vehicle’s service life. Volkswagen Group Components runs the Group’s first plant for recycling electric car batteries in Salzgitter - a committed step towards sustainable end-to-end responsibility for the entire value chain of the electric vehicle battery.
Clean separation: battery recycling in Salzgitter.
Second-life first – then recycling
The unique feature of the Salzgitter plant is that it only recycles batteries that can no longer be used for other purposes. Before the battery is recycled, an analysis determines whether the battery is still powerful enough to be given a second life in mobile energy storage systems. Larger volumes of battery returns are not expected until the late 2020s at the earliest. Therefore, the plant has been designed to initially recycle up to 3,600 battery systems per year during the pilot phase – this is the equivalent to approximately 1,500 tonnes. In future, the system can be scaled up to handle larger quantities as the process is consistently optimised.
The aim is the industrialised recovery of valuable raw materials such as lithium, nickel, manganese and cobalt in a closed loop together with aluminium, copper and plastics, achieving a recycling rate of more than 90% over the long term. With the closed-loop approach, Volkswagen Group Components aims to create a closed material cycle that will not only reduce the Group’s primary demand for raw materials in the long term, but can also significantly reduce the CO2 footprint of the batteries. In the long term, the professional disposal of the battery and the reprocessing of its valuable components has an ecologically and economically sustainable effect. If the costs fall, the customer benefits. This is another goal of the circular economy of future mobility.
