Just a quick followup to Post #1712, where I talked about the lack electric vehicle battery recycling in the U.S., at present.
Instantaneous death via orphan device.
I’m not the sort of person to be daunted by most D-I-Y repairs. At various times in my life, I’ve replaced a car engine, installed a basement bathroom from scratch, built a workshop, rehabbed a fixer-upper home, and so on.
Read the instructions. Buy the right materials. Do what the experts tell you. And, usually, all will go well.
Maybe I’m getting older. Maybe I’m getting wiser. But I draw the line at D-I-Y repairs where the instructions begin with a list of all the ways you can achieve instantaneous death, if you happen to touch the wrong thing, at the wrong time.
The warnings above are from the installation guide to my A123 Systems Hymotion battery pack.
Fifteen years ago, that 5 kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack was the state-of-the-art way to add plug-in capability to a Prius. Today, it’s a brick. It has joined the choir invisible. It’s 200 pounds of dead weight bolted into the back of my son’s car.
And it’s my hands-on lesson in getting lithium-ion car traction battery recycled, outside of the channels maintained by the vehicle manufacturers themselves. Because, in addition to being dead, it’s an orphan device. A123 Systems is long gone. The entity that was going to recycle these for A123 is no longer in the battery recycling business. And most of the remaining U.S. vehicle lithium-ion battery recycling capacity appears dedicated to individual manufacturers, who then pay the cost of having their own batteries recycled.
Maybe if I lived in California, I could readily find a taker for this. But here in Virginia, getting rid of it is pretty much like finding a home for nuclear waste. Everyone acknowledges the problem. We’re just a bit shy on solutions.
Bury it in the back yard.
The first challenge is getting it removed from the car. I figure, even if the dealer can’t recycle it for us, we could just sit it in the back of the garage and deal with it later. Or bury it in the back yard. But, per prior section, I’m not going to touch it. So we need a Toyota expert or Hymotion expert to remove it.
We called the folks who installed it original, and who managed one major repair: Fitzgerald Toyota in Gaithersburg MD. Their response was basically “Hymotion who?” They no longer deal with these, and they would not touch it.
We tried our local dealer — Ourisman Toyota in Fairfax VA — and they will at least look at it. There will be a hefty recycling fee, if they will take on the task of removing it. But knowing what I know — that lithium-ion battery recycling is a money-losing proposition — that seems fair. It’s just a question of how much.
So, in the next couple of days, my wife and I will be dropping that car off to see whether or not the service crew at Ourisman is up to the task of pulling that battery and disposing of it. If I had to bet — unique product, unique repair, unique disposal, done at the dealership — if we get it done for under a grand, I’ll count myself lucky.
I’ll keep you posted.
Because, as we all know, readily-available EV battery recycling is just around the corner.
P.S. I was just joking about the back yard. I think.
