Nissan takes the long, complex approach to recycling old EV batteries

In a small seaside town in northeast Japan, factory workers are disassembling old batteries from the world’s first mass-market electric cars and preparing them for a second life. Reusing batteries could help the auto industry live up to its promise to make a truly green transition. But it’s time-consuming and, for now, unprofitable.

Early models of Nissan Motor Co.’s all-electric Leaf, which first went on sale almost 13 years ago, have started to reach the end of their life spans. In an effort to make the end of the cars’ lives as green as their operation was, their used batteries are collected at Nissan dealerships in the US and Japan and sent to the factory in Namie, Fukushima, a town devastated in 2011 by a tsunami and a nuclear disaster.

Engineers at the plant, operated by 4R Energy Co. — Nissan’s joint venture with trading house Sumitomo Corp. — spend hours on each battery pack before shipping them out, mostly to be used again in another electric vehicle but sometimes to be repurposed in other devices, such as backup generators.

Collecting and reusing EV batteries keeps them from being discarded in landfills, where they might release toxins, or from being melted and pulled apart for their metals, which can be hazardous when done improperly. It also would reduce the industry’s reliance on the mining of costly rare-earth elements such as lithium and cobalt and cut down on the carbon emissions involved in making EV batteries — the dark side of the green car business.

Moreover, creating a bigger market for used batteries could boost the secondhand market for electric cars as well, by extending their life span and bolstering their resale value, which would hasten their adoption, says Yutaka Horie, the president of 4R Energy. “For EVs to proliferate, it needs to get easier for customers to buy and sell,” Horie said as he gave a tour of the factory that opened in 2018 with local government support. Namie officials have been trying to attract industries to the area after it lost 90% of its population in the evacuations following the Fukushima disaster.

With all the nuclear reactors in the area now decommissioned, officials are seeking to host businesses dealing with renewable energy and other new technologies. Because the project would help fulfill Nissan’s goal to make EVs more sustainable and popular, profitability was never an urgent priority. But 4R hopes that with time, it will become a profitable business on its own.

At first glance, the factory doesn’t look very cutting-edge. Robots and other automation equipment, a common sight at most car factories these days, aren’t noticeable. Instead, most of the work is done manually by its nine, mostly local engineers.

A reused EV battery can cost about half the price of a new one, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Tatsuo Yoshida. He says what sets Nissan apart from other EV makers is that its 4R subsidiary is concentrating on reusing batteries as opposed to recycling them. Reusing entails swapping out deteriorated cells with healthy ones to extend the life of an aged but still-working battery. When recycling a battery, its rare-earth metals and other useful parts are extracted and used to produce something new.

At 4R’s plant in Namie, the process starts by slicing open the battery packs to evaluate their condition. Each pack weighs 300 kilograms (661 pounds) and contains 48 modules, each consisting of two batteries. Once the insides are exposed, they’re plugged into a computer for an initial assessment.

Workers put the packs through a stress test in a sealed room they call the sauna, repeatedly exposing them to extremely high and low temperatures. This provides data on the extent of deterioration and the remaining range in each battery. “This data is everything,” Horie says, motioning toward the sauna.