Current Situation and Trend of Echlon Utilization of Retired New Energy Vehicles Batteries in China

Abstract

With the long-term use of some new energy vehicles(NEVs) in China gradually falling into disuse, the echelon utilization of retired NEV batteries has been widely concerned, the number of participating enterprises have exceeded 40, and the built production capacity exceeding 30GWh/ year (about 270,000 tons/year). However, due to the limited number of retired batteries for current vehicles, the utilization rate of enterprise echlon utilization capacity is less than 12%, thus most enterprises are compatible with using new batteries for production to improve capacity utilization. In 2019, 13,000 tons of used batteries were recycled and echlon utilizatized, and 809MWh (about 9,700 tons) of echlon utilization products were produced. Among them, about 50% of the echelon utilization products are used in the field of base station power supply, 30% in the field of energy storage, 16% in the field of low-speed power and 4% in consumer electronic products. In summary, China’s retired NEV batteries echlon utilization industry has developed rapidly in recent years, and has formed a certain scale of production capacity, and actively explored many application fields such as base station power backup, energy storage and low-speed power. The industry has entered the initial stage of commercial operation.