Volvo Cars has signed a strategic cooperation agreement with the world’s largest battery-maker Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. (CATL) to focus on electric vehicle battery recycling, according to a news report published by CnEVPost on April 18.
Citing the automaker, the report mentioned that the strategic partnership between Volvo Cars and CATL aims to promote the recycling of battery materials and reduce the carbon footprint of EVs throughout their life cycle.
It is known that batteries are made of a variety of non-renewable metal elements and their carbon emissions from mining and processing account for a significant proportion of the battery supply chain. Volvo Cars and CATL plan to reduce EV full life-cycle carbon emissions by dismantling, recycling and reusing used batteries.
According to the report, the Geely-owned Swedish carmaker plans to recycle retired batteries from EVs for its portfolio, as well as the batteries scrapped during factory production. These batteries will be dismantled by Volvo-certified suppliers to extract more than 90% of the nickel, cobalt, lithium and other critical materials. These materials will be supplied to CATL, which will recycle these to produce new batteries for use in the production of new Volvo EVs.
The agreement between the two companies is being seen as an important milestone in building a battery recycling, closed-loop business model in mainland China.
Volvo Cars’ efforts to recycle battery materials are aligned with its plan of achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040, which will require joint efforts from suppliers across the value chain.
