Whether electric vehicles are more environmentally friendly than fuel vehicles is still a hot topic for many riders. One of the important reasons is that the recycling of power batteries is a major challenge to electric vehicle manufacturers and the environment and ecology.

Previously, Tesla had released a lithium-ion battery recycling plan, saying that the company had been able to recycle waste lithium-ion batteries 100%, and its ultimate goal was "high recovery rate, low cost and low environmental impact", but the current progress was not announced in the plan.

Tesla also said that most of the batteries currently recycled by the program come from its own R&D and quality control departments, and the number of batteries from the market is extremely low. Only a few high-mileage operating vehicles are recycled due to battery decay.

However, "100% recycling" in Tesla's report seems to mean "100% of used batteries will be recycled in some way" instead of "every battery can be recycled 100%".

Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit, a foreign professional dismantling agency, said that at present, no modern battery can achieve 100% recycling, because there are a lot of non-recyclable materials such as adhesives and sealants.

The battery industry has been developing and innovating, but at present, the recycling of used batteries is still a double problem of technology and commerce.

It is reported that power lithium batteries are mainly divided into lithium ferrous phosphate and lithium ternary, among which heavy metals such as cobalt, nickel, manganese and lithium can be recycled. However, the high cost of recycling makes it difficult to recycle waste batteries effectively. Some papers pointed out that recycling 1 ton lithium iron phosphate battery requires multiple processes to purify heavy metals, and the cost is as high as 8,500 yuan, but the market value of the obtained metal is only 9,000 yuan.

At present, the electric vehicle industry is in the ascendant, most of the power batteries of electric vehicles still have strong performance, and the retired on-board batteries still have a certain capacity, which can be gradually used in the field of energy storage. However, when the electric vehicle industry faces a large number of scrapped on-board batteries in the future, battery recycling will be a big challenge for the industry and environmental ecology.