Tech

Why your iPhone 17 might come with a recycled battery

The rapid uptake of electric vehicles is great news for climate action, but it presents a difficult incentive for battery recyclers.

Batteries can last more than a decade in a vehicle, and they can be used for much longer if they eventually fail. second life in fixed energy storage. So in most cases, EV batteries won’t be ready for recycling for at least about 15 years. Looking back 15 years ago, in 2008, Tesla Roadster was just starting to be produced and the company was only making a few hundred units a year for this car. first few years. To put it mildly: there aren’t many trams on the road these days because of old age and won’t be for a while.

So, as the electric vehicle market continues to grow exponentially, there will be a shortage of recycled materials. For example, if all the electric vehicle and phone manufacturers wanted to use only recycled cobalt, there wouldn’t be enough.

The production of batteries for electric vehicles is booming: the total amount of lithium-ion batteries produced for light vehicles globally could reach 12 million tons by 2030. Meanwhile, less than 200,000 tons of batteries from the same class will be produced. The vehicle will be available for recycling before that date.

Despite that difficult gap, there are a number of reasons why Apple was able to meet its commitment to recycled cobalt, said Hans Eric Melin.top Circular Energy Storagea consulting company specializing in battery recycling.

For one, mobile devices have been powered by lithium-ion batteries for decades. Thanks to your dad’s camcorder and your Motorola Razr flip phone from 2006, there’s at least some recycled cobalt floating around on the market today.

And the economics of using recycled materials are also quite different for personal appliances and cars. Due to its size, an EV battery can account for nearly 40% of the vehicle’s cost, Melin said. That’s not the case with devices like phones, so a company like Apple might end up paying a little more for recycled battery material without affecting the price of the entire device.

So your iPhone in 2025 (by my math it could be iPhone 17) could be made with cobalt from recycled sources. Vehicles may take a little longer: Electric vehicle batteries are larger and have fewer older batteries ready to be upgraded. But we are moving towards a world where we can reuse more materials in the technology we know and love.



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