Longer-Lasting EV Batteries Slow Ramp Up at Recycler Hydrovolt

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(Bloomberg) — Electric car batteries are lasting longer than expected, delaying the ramp up of cell reprocessing at a Norwegian recycler, Hydrovolt.

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The company — a subsidiary of aluminum producer Norsk Hydro ASA — opened a semi-automated production line for discharging and dismantling batteries last year, with a target of handling 12,000 metric tons of power packs from about 25,000 electric vehicles a year. It will process only about a third of that this year, according to Chief Executive Officer Ole-Christen Enger.

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Norway is a leader in the uptake of electric vehicles, with battery-powered models accounting for 95% of new passenger cars sold last month. Electric cars make up more than one-in-four passenger vehicles on the road in the Nordic nation. That means the country is ripe for developing industry to handle services further along the life-cycle of EVs. 

“We all know that the market will come, and vehicles are on the road, but the lifetime of batteries have been much longer than anticipated,” Enger said, speaking in an interview at the company’s facility in Fredrikstad, south of Oslo. “The batteries coming on the market today will follow the car’s lifetime, typically 18 years in Norway, so that has delayed when the battery is coming in for recycling.”

The number of EVs scrapped in Norway grew by about 50% to 3,662 between 2023 and 2024, according to the Norwegian Road Federation. Battery models accounted for 4.4% of passenger cars sent to wreckers last year, the federation said.

Hydrovolt began manually dismantling batteries to produce secondary raw materials in 2022, experience that underpinned the development of its semi-automated line, Enger said. Packs arriving at the facility come from scrap yards across Norway or as a result of product recalls. They can be from ferries and stationary storage, as well as EVs, with cells that can vary considerably — pouches, cylinders, rectangles.

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“They come in every shape and form,” the executive said. “We need to basically do an autopsy of the cells to get the information that’s important for our process before we enter or introduce the material.”

The recycling process begins by fully draining the battery of electricity, with automated fork-lifts loading packs into individual bays, each complete with thermal cameras and a water bed. If the temperature of the battery rises to levels considered dangerous, it will immediately be dunked and pushed outside the plant. Many of the packs arrive with as much as 50% of their charge remaining, Enger said, power that Hydrovolt stores in an on-site energy storage system or sells to the grid.

Once the pack is stripped of its casing and glue, it is ready for crushing. The resulting materials — aluminum, copper and so-called black mass — can then be shipped across borders to customers in OECD countries safely, as “transporting waste batteries across borders is very difficult or cumbersome,” Enger said. 

Hydrovolt announced plans last year to establish a plant in France, where it would dismantle and discharge batteries, before shipping them to Norway for crushing.

Norsk Hydro set up Hydrovolt as a 50-50 joint venture with Swedish partner Northvolt AB in June 2020. Norsk Hydro has since taken full ownership of the startup, before its Swedish partner filed for bankruptcy. Hydro has said that it is now seeking a new partner for the recycler.

—With assistance from Rob Dawson.

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