Originally Posted by
Greg Funk
I think re-purposing used EV batteries will likely be a decent business at some point. A battery that's 50% of its original capacity may not be useful in the vehicle but could work well for many other applications where size isn't critical. As far as repairing batteries at the cell level, that's certainly not feasible in Teslas with thousands of cells wire bonded together. It might happen at a module level where a vehicle has 3 or 4 modules that make up a 'pack'. Mixing fresh cells with aged cells doesn't generally work well.
I'm not 100% up on the latest battery info, but I think ultimately they're going to have to be willing to address the batteries at a cellular level. It will probably be handled like any other automotive part. Get a re manufactured module. Slap it in. Send the bad module out. Get a core-refund. Someone repairs the core.
Big picture, if you have a module with batteries lets say 95% capacity and 3 cells that are at 50% and it's tanking the battery, there's no reason that they can't find 3 other cells with a similar max capacity and swap them in. Then take the bad cells and recycle them. Now you can sell the module at 95% capacity which would be great for most people.
It's hard to say if a battery that is worn out will be best recycled in it's current state as a power wall or something like that or broken down and recycled into "new" batteries. I'm not smart enough to know which is the best path forward.
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