More than half of all EV batteries could be produced by recycled lithium, claims CATL CEO

Chinese battery giant CATL is calling for greater effort to make electric vehicle batteries more sustainable, with chief executive Robin Zeng recently claiming that more than half of all new batteries could be produced using recycled lithium globally in 2042. Speaking at the World New Energy Vehicle Congress on Sept. 27, Zeng mentioned that CATL’s battery recycling business has already gained scale, with a current capacity to process 270,000 tons of waste batteries, and is expected to reach 1 million tons in the future. In 2023, CATL recycled a total of 100,000 tons of waste batteries, utilizing these materials to produce 13,000 tons of lithium carbonate, a key component of lithium-ion batteries. The recovery rate for lithium in battery raw materials has reached 91%, while that numbers for nickel, cobalt, and manganese is as high as 99.6%. [Caixin, in Chinese]