Toyota will recycle electric vehicle batteries with Tesla co-founder’s project

Photo by Toyota/Getty Images

Toyota is partnering with a company that recycles vehicle batteries, which is headed by a co-founding member of the electric car company. The plan is to break the batteries down so their materials can be used to make new batteries.

The main components of a battery cell are anodes and cathodes. The company wants to create a closed-loop supply chain for electric vehicles, meaning that it takes batteries from old EV and turns them into batteries for new cars.

While Toyota is currently launching its first long-range battery-electric vehicle, newer cars aren't the focus of the partnership's efforts.

The first wave of battery-electric vehicles, which are over 20 years old and nearing their end of life, are the focus of the two companies. Most of the time, that means first- generation Toyota Priuses. In the future, it wants to have some operations near the recently announced North American battery plant on the East Coast.

The methods for recycling vehicle batteries aren't tried and true. Ford and Volvo are partners in the company's program to deal with end-of-life electric vehicles. The capacity of the company to handle batteries at scale is relatively unknown.

According to the company, it gets six gigawatt-hours of batteries a year for recycling, and it hopes to be able to produce 100 gigh of components by the year 2025.

It seems like those plans seemambitious. There is a large amount of incentive. EV batteries are expensive and some companies aren't able to make them at scale, which makes it hard for them to make EV's. It doesn't seem like that process is going to be cheap any time soon, so there is incentive for automakers to look for and help fund recycling efforts