Can the vehicles and their components be recycled in a satisfactory manner?

Specific investigations into the recyclability of e-vehicles are difficult in the current phase of market preparation. The National Platform Electric Mobility treats the topic with urgency and recycling constitutes a significant focus of the R&D programs of the German government within the framework of electric mobility. This includes research and development projects, which investigate the different methods for dismantling, separating and reusing components like traction batteries and e-motors as well as recycling strategies. Furthermore, the investigation focused on logictics concepts for collecting, storing and recycling the components as well as reusing certain materials. At the same time, ecobalances for the recycling processes were created, which were developed in the BMUB-funded projects LithoRec II and EcoBatRec. For the battery types that were investigated, the ecobalance  results were clearly positive for both recycling processes. This demonstrated not only the ecological advantages of the recycling processes compared to extracting them from primary raw materials. The ecobalances also showed further potential for optimizing the environmental performance of the recycling processes.