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The Conversation
Environment
Mehdi Seyedmahmoudian, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering, Swinburne University of Technology

Batteries are the environmental Achilles heel of electric vehicles – unless we repair, reuse and recycle them

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Electric vehicle advocates say the cars ultimately have a smaller carbon footprint than their fossil-fuelled counterparts and could resolve our energy concerns for good. Well, fair enough, but questions arise when we dig into the inner layers of electrical vehicles and see how sustainable their components are. In fact, the batteries that power electric vehicles may also be their Achilles heel.

Batteries are the most expensive component of an electric vehicle. If the battery pack is damaged, defective or simply old, this can lead to the vehicle being written off prematurely. Tesla is even producing “structural” battery packs described as having “zero repairability”.

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