Electric car batteries could soon get a second lease on life

The DESL team hopes to develop a method for certifying batteries for second-life applications. Alain Herzog/EPFL EPFL has joined six other Swiss research institutions in CircuBAT, an initiative selected for the first Innosuisse Flagship program, in order to develop a circular business model for lithium-ion batteries. As climate concerns increase, electric vehicles are growing in popularity. In Switzerland, some 5.5% of passenger cars have a battery, and more than half of all new registrations in Q4 2021 were for electric or hybrid cars, according to the Swiss Federal Office of Energy. But what will happen to these vehicles' lithium-ion batteries once the cars reach the end of their useful lives? "Even when the batteries are no longer suitable for electric vehicles, they still have 70%-80% of their capacity left," says Mario Paolone, a professor at EPFL's Distributed Electrical Systems Laboratory (DESL). The CircuBAT initiative, which officially kicked off today, aims to turn the production, use, and recycling of electric-vehicle lithium-ion batteries into a closed-loop process. The project will run for four years and be carried out by a consortium of seven Swiss research institutions and 24 companies, with the goal of making batteries last longer by optimizing each stage of their lifecycle.