Car battery ‘passports’ could help manage growing waste

October 11

Every electric vehicle should arrive in Australia with a battery passport, an inquiry has heard, and manufacturers should be made to pay to recycle batteries at the end of their driving lives.

The Transition to Electric Vehicles inquiry hearing in Canberra on Friday also heard calls for the government to reform its incoming New Vehicle Efficiency Standard to avoid stifling innovative homegrown companies.

The calls came during the eighth public hearing for the federal parliament inquiry, established in January to investigate the impacts, opportunities and changes involved in moving from fossil fuel to electric vehicles.

Electric cars made up 6.4 per cent of all new vehicle sales in Australia in September, according to the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries and Electric Vehicle Council.

While their numbers continued to rise, Australian recycling firms were not yet ready to deal with an influx of large lithium-ion batteries, Battery Stewardship Council chief executive Libby Chaplin said.

“Today, electric vehicle battery waste is around 4000 tonnes but it will reach 100,000 tonnes by 2035 and a million tonnes by 2045,” she said.

“This growth brings significant challenges.”

Electric vehicle batteries were currently being sent to two Victorian firms to recycle their contents, she said, and extract and export “black mass” rich in valuable metals such as lithium, cobalt and graphite.

But the federal government should take further action to recycle batteries, she said, launching a tracking scheme in the short-term and introducing EV battery passports like those being designed in Europe.

Under European laws, all electric vehicles must come with a digital battery passport from February 2027 that will share information such as its size, composition, life expectancy, and origin.

Vehicle manufacturers should also be asked to pay to recycle the batteries in their cars, Ms Chaplin said, to fund the development of a nationwide recycling scheme.

“The Australian community will be paying for battery stewardship in any event,” she said.

“We can either ensure that we’re designing a scheme now that can cover the costs and ensure that we have responsible and safe management into the future, or we can wait and not do anything and then in the future there will be a much bigger cost.”

The inquiry also heard calls for the government to amend its New Vehicle Efficiency Standard that comes into effect in 2025, as Advanced Manufacturing Queensland chief executive Edward Kocwa said it would fail to reward local companies bringing more EVs to Australia.

Brisbane-based firm AUSEV would be left out of the standard’s credit scheme, he said, even though it was modifying thousands of Ford F-150 Lightning electric utes to work on local roads.

“They’re excluding our vehicles, our pathway, from the scheme,” he said.

“I don’t think they did it deliberately, I just think that they didn’t realise the size of the opportunity and the number of vehicles that we are putting on to the road.”

Changes to the scheme could encourage more Australian manufacturing businesses to enter the electric vehicle industry, Mr Kocwa said.

The parliamentary inquiry is due to sit in Adelaide on Thursday.

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