The company stated that even if the mined lithium drops from today's nearly US$30/kg to about US$5-6/kg, its method will remain competitive. The Sumitomo Metal Method promises to provide a more reliable supply of cobalt, lithium and copper.

As we all know, the batteries of electric vehicles can be recycled: the idea of ​​recycling used electric vehicle batteries makes sense, because the use of recycled materials in production is much cheaper than mining new materials and is less harmful to the environment.

These materials are used in the cathodes of lithium-ion batteries, which are the most common battery type in electric vehicles, and their demand is expected to increase globally. With its experience in copper refining, Sumitomo Metal has developed a method that can extract copper, nickel, and cobalt from waste electric vehicle batteries by pulverizing waste electric vehicle batteries, heating the resulting powder to a specific temperature and adjusting the oxygen content. And lithium. The company claims that this process is the first of its kind in the world.

Sumitomo Metal plans to start a recycling plant in Japan by 2023. It will have the capacity to process 7,000 tons of shredded batteries per year: enough to extract 200 tons of cobalt, enough for 20,000 electric cars-from batteries using nickel manganese-cobalt cathodes.

Sumitomo Metal also stated that it is expected to extract materials of comparable quality to alternative mining at a relatively low cost and in commercial quantities. The company said that even if the mined lithium drops to around US$5 or US$6 per kilogram, or the prices of nickel and cobalt return to their previous prices, its method will remain competitive. The demand for electric vehicles has caused the prices of these materials to skyrocket, and obtaining these materials has become an increasingly severe challenge for global companies. The price of lithium more than doubled in a year to nearly US$30 per kilogram, while the price of cobalt rose by 80% to approximately US$60,000 per ton. In addition, many of these materials are faced with supply chain risks, as well as regulatory compliance risks. Approximately 70% of the world's cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and in some cases child labor is involved, and currently approximately 60% is processed in China​​. There is increasing pressure to use more recycled materials in electric vehicle batteries. According to the new regulations proposed in November this year, the EU’s goal is to require electric vehicle batteries to contain at least 12% recycled cobalt and 4% recycled lithium and nickel by 2030. The Volkswagen Group has begun testing methods for extracting these materials from discarded batteries.

Likewise, the good news is that batteries using recycled materials can be as good as, or even better than, batteries using new materials. Electric car batteries usually lose about 30% of their capacity and need to be replaced after about ten years. Old batteries are often reused as stationary storage batteries, which means they will not be disposed of in a few years.

At present, Sumitomo Metal plans to purchase a small amount of shredded batteries and use the extracted materials for internal cathode production. The company now hopes to invest in this area in order to gain an advantage over competitors when battery recycling becomes mainstream. On the other hand, one of the main topics of anti-electric vehicle groups is often that batteries cannot be recycled, no matter how ridiculous it sounds. Tesla refuted this idea in its 2020 impact report, which stated that 100% of its waste batteries were recycled and 0% ended up in landfills.

Tesla stated in the report, "...As a manufacturer of our internal battery projects, we are in the best position to efficiently recycle our products to maximize the recycling of key battery materials. With the Berlin-Brand The Den Bosch Super Factory and Texas Super Factory implement in-house battery manufacturing. We expect global manufacturing waste to increase significantly. We intend to tailor recycling solutions for each location to reintroduce valuable materials into our manufacturing process middle."

Tesla's business is built on the power of the company's battery innovation. From the initial Roadster era to the launch of Model S Plaid this year, it is clear that Tesla’s battery technology is a key factor that enables the company to stay ahead of its competitors in the sustainable transportation market. We will soon see whether this potential competition from Sumitomo will pose a challenge, or whether it will go hand in hand with Tesla.

All pictures are provided by Tesla.

Nico Caballero is the Vice President of Finance at Cogency Power, specializing in solar energy. He also holds a diploma in electric vehicles from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and enjoys researching Tesla and electric vehicle batteries. You can reach him via @NicoTorqueNews on Twitter. Nico reports on the latest developments in Tesla and electric vehicles in Torque News.