1. Is the price of the vehicle effected? James Brown 422026

2. Tesla’s Recycling Scheme Tesla currently has not implemented its recycling scheme due to the lifetime of the batteries expected to be around 100,000 miles. The batteries are discharged for safety reasons. The propylene glycol in the cooling tubes is removed and is recycled locally The electronics are removed and tested and any still functioning are re-used The wires and other metals are removed and recycled locally The modules are stored until a large enough quantity is held for them to be sent to Toxco recycling facility. The modules are frozen into liquid nitrogen to prevent further reactions of the lithium components. Then the modules are shredded and crushed into small pieces. These pieces are then screened and separated into fluff, copper cobalt and slurry. The copper cobalt is then sold for recovery of metals such as cobalt, aluminium, nickel, and copper. The slurry is formed into a block and is reused in appliance coatings. (Kelty, 2008) Fluff Copper Cobalt Slurry block

3. What will the recycling produce?  Recycling will prevent harmful lithium chemicals being put into landfill which in time will damage the environment.  About 60% of the battery can be recycled. (Kelty,2008)  And a further 10% can be reused. (Kelty,2008)  The “fluff” will be put into landfill as this is mainly made of plastic and until volumes of recycling are higher, the plastic will not be recycled as the effort and cost is very high.

4. What is the cost of recycling a lithium ion battery?  Currently Toxco is the only company to carry out the recycling of lithium ion batteries on a large scale.  The cost of Toxco’s operation was initially about $4.50/lb ($10/kg), but it has decreased to less than half that. With larger quantities of more uniform input, costs could be expected to decrease, and revenues increase, even more.(United States, Center for Transportation Research, 2000, p. 49)  The Li-ion battery pack for a typical EV weighs approximately 800 lb. Even if the battery sales price were to come down to the USABC goal of $150/kWh, a 30-kWh pack would cost $4,500, and recycling would amount to less than 20% of the initial cost. (In reality, it is expected to be even less.) (United States, Center for Transportation Research, 2000, p. 49)

5. Conclusion  Currently Tesla offers a cash back scheme for the recycling of its battery cells. This means that the original cost of the vehicle is not effected by the recycling of the battery modules.  Toxco states that recycling of lithium-ion batteries will cost about 5$/kg with large enough volumes. The Tesla energy cell weighs roughly 455kilos. So the recycling of each battery cell will cost Tesla $2275.  The base price for a Tesla Roadster is $109,000. I feel that if Tesla included the cost of recycling in the cars original price it would not have a large effect on the cost of the car.  Obviously Tesla would recoup costs from being able to sell on the recycled material, or by being able to re-use it themselves. I still feel that Tesla will not make money from it though as it will have the cost of recycling + the cash back offered to the customer.

6. References  Kurt, K. (March 2008). Mythbusters Part 3: Recycling out Non-toxic Battery Packs. Retrieved November 29 th, 2008, from http://www.teslamotors.com/blog4/?p=66.  United States. Linda Gaines and Roy Cuenca. (2000). Costs of Lithium-ion Batteries for Vehicles. Argonne, Illinois: Argonne National Laboratory.