At a nondescript office park in the Mira Mesa neighborhood of San Diego sit a pair of nondescript cubes, adjacent to a nondescript library annex that houses old books, papers and other items from UC San Diego.
But something different is happening. Inside each cube sits a collection of used electric vehicle batteries — one containing Tesla batteries and the other stocked with old batteries from Nissan Leafs.
While these lithium-ion batteries once powered cars that are no longer on the road, they still have plenty of lifespan left in them. A local company with connections to the university has taken what would usually be discarded and found a novel way to reuse them.
