Four years ago, I bought a new phone, choosing one with a user-replaceable battery.
I just replaced the battery.
I got few surprises.
Surprise 1: Rapid improvement in lithium-ion batteries.
The new battery advertised 70% more capacity (milli-amp-hours) than the stock OEM battery that it replaces. And, based on the four-day-plus time to recharge, shown at the start of this post, I’d say that’s about right.
Before replacing the battery, I’d never seen a four-day battery life on this phone, not even when it was new. Yet, the new battery is exactly the same size, and (near as I can tell) the same weight as the battery it replaces.
The design of this phone is just five years old. Is it even remotely possible that lithium-ion battery energy density increased 70% in just the past five years?
Well, now that I look for it, yeah, a lot of people say roughly the same thing;
Source: https://rmi.org/the-rise-of-batteries-in-six-charts-and-not-too-many-numbers/
So, not only are lithium-ion batteries getting better, they are getting better at a very rapid clip.
This suggests that electric vehicles are only going to get more attractive, and at a faster rate.
I’m completely satisfied with my 2020 Chevy Bolt. Around town it has about a 250 mile range, which is plenty for my use. But I do wonder how much more electrical capacity I could have gotten if I’d waited a few more years.
In any case, I thought lithium-ion battery improvements had slowed to a crawl.
I was wrong. If anything, the pace of change has accelerated since 2020.
Surprise 2: Battery recycling is now behind-the-counter only, at Home Depot.
Source: Home Depot
Used to be, HD proudly featured a set of collection boxes, right inside the front door, for recycling used rechargeable batteries and other items.
Those are gone now, at least at my nearest HD. There’s just an empty spot inside the front door, where they used to sit.
Home Depot will still accept rechargeable batteries for recycling. They are just very quiet about it, all of a sudden. Battery recycling is now behind-the-counter only. The customer must somehow know that HD recycles them, and ask at the counter. When I did that, Home Depot took my old lithium-ion phone battery for recycling. (Though see Post #1776 on how much recycling actually occurs.)
I guess this sort of thing is to be expected. Environmentalism is out. For the next four (or more) years, it will be fashionable to put our heads in the sand and pretend global warming doesn’t exist. And isn’t a threat. As we hand the EV market to the Chinese, and concentrate on burning fossil fuels. Even though that’s a dead end.
In any case, new this year, recycling rechargeable batteries is no longer something my local Home Depot is proud of. They’ll still do it. But now it’s a request-only service, where you hand your battery across the counter for recycling.
There’s no law in Virginia that requires that retailers offer this type of battery recycling. So I guess I should be grateful for what I’ve got, otherwise I’d have to take my dead rechargeables to the County landfill.
Just seems nuts to take an existing service that kind-of works, and degrade it.
But I guess that’s pretty much the essence of the times.
Kind of nuts. And degrading.
