Recycling car batteries continues to be a challenge and that is why Nissan has teamed up with 4R Energy to “attack” this problem.
Born a few months before the first Nissan Leaf hit the market (in December 2010), 4R Energy Corp. is the result of a partnership between Nissan and Sumitomo Corp.
The purpose of this partnership? Develop the technology and infrastructure to revamp, recycle, resell, and reuse Nissan electric car batteries to power other things.
Now, after several years of waiting for the Nissan Leaf's batteries to start “requiring a makeover”, meaning that they actually reached the end of their useful life, 4R Energy is now ready to process them.
How it works?
When end-of-life batteries arrive at the 4R Energy factory, they are evaluated and assigned a rating of “A” to “C”. Batteries that are rated “A” can be reused in new high-performance battery packs for new electric automobiles.
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A “B” rating means that the batteries are capable of being used in industrial machinery (such as forklift trucks) and for stationary energy storage on a large scale. In these cases, these batteries can capture the excess electricity generated during the day by solar panels and then supply it overnight.
Finally, batteries that receive a “C” rating can be used, for example, in units that supply auxiliary power when mains failures occur. According to 4R Energy engineers, recovered batteries have a useful life of 10 to 15 years.
a set of opportunities
One of the ideas behind this process of reusing, remodeling, reselling and recycling batteries is also to help lower the total cost of ownership of electric cars even further. Like? Allowing owners to obtain a higher value for the battery at the end of the vehicle's life, as it is still a significant resource.
One of the best examples of this process of finding a second life for batteries carried out by 4R Energy is the fact that in Yumeshima, an artificial island in Japan, there is already a solar plant that uses 16 electric car batteries to cope with fluctuations of energy production.
