Assessing electric vehicles battery second life remanufacture and management

Abstract

Electric cars are entering into the automotive market. However, their prices are still expensive mostly due to the battery cost. Additionally, electric vehicle batteries are considered not useful for traction purposes after they have lost a 20% of its capacity. Having still an 80% of its capacity, these batteries may work on stationary applications with lower requirements than electric mobility.

In order to recover part of the battery costs came out the idea of giving batteries a second life. Nonetheless, before its reuse, these batteries should follow a transformation process that, although valuable, it is not simple. They should be collected, checked and adapted, if necessary, to their new application requirements. Nowadays, each car manufacturer has its own battery partner using a particular cell shape and chemistry. Additionally, each battery has different module configurations and electronic control parameters and equipment. Moreover, each battery model has a particular refrigeration system in the final packaging that forms the whole battery. All these aspects put the reusability of electric vehicle batteries into a narrow path where a bad step could lead to business collapse. This study shows some of the difficulties and issues that should be taken into account when managing second life battery businesses.