Second life or recycling for EV batteries?
Remanufacturing and closed-loop supply chains are growing in the operations research journals, and the first large wave of electric-vehicle batteries is reaching the end of its first life. Should a used battery go to stationary storage, to remanufacturing or straight to recycling, and who should decide?
What prompted this
In the operations research journals, "remanufacturing" had 8 papers in July–September 2026 against about 4 expected and "closed-loop supply chain" 9 against 5 (see the operations research dashboard). Since October 2025, 107 papers carry a remanufacturing, closed-loop or reverse-logistics keyword (69 in operations research journals). Twelve of them carry a battery keyword, and "second-life batteries" appears on just one paper.
Questions
- Given a battery's state of health, when is second-life storage worth more than recycling, once testing, repurposing and the risk of failure are priced in?
- How do mineral prices and recycling mandates, such as the recycled-content targets of the EU battery regulation, change that choice?
- Who does better as the owner of used batteries: carmakers, battery makers or third parties?
Data that could help
Battery ageing data such as the NASA and CALCE datasets (in the dataset ranking's list), mineral prices and storage-market prices.
Next step
Build a decision model that routes used batteries by state of health, and compare its value under 2023 and 2026 lithium prices.