This should save them a good chunk of money considering that nickel is expensive. I'm just not sure how long it will last. Say, Toyota and others move to lithium-ion batteries in a few years. Will they have enough time to get their investment back from this new "recycling business"?
If batteries last as many miles in normal cars as they have in taxis, it may well be 20 years before the Gen IIIs get recycled due to batteries wearing out. (now they are being recycled due to the car being totaled) Note that they sold Prius for 10 years before they had enough failures to devise a method to recycle back into batteries.
I would think so. They may lose money on the recycling itself, given the likely transportation costs, but it is less money than they would have spent on green pr that these announcements get. I think it has more to do with technological changes. There are plenty of nimh dead batteries to recycle from consumer electronics. When these get recycled the nickle is used mainly in steel products. This sounds like it is a better process.
Toyota shares a patent on traction battery refurbishment but they choose to send failed modules to generic battery recyclers. Given what we know about the NHW11 modules, their systemic weakness, trying to redirect this stream back to their battery plants makes a lot of sense. What didn't make sense was the claimed $200 bounty on used traction batteries. I've seen at least two cases, in the past, where the local dealer ignored this policy (thanks to other Toyota contacts who I reached out to help resolve the problem.) When the bounty becomes 'fair market value,' I'll believe they are serious. When I get a note from my local Toyota dealers that this policy is in place, I'll believe it. When the insurance industry that gets a lot of these salvage cars joins the program, I'll believe it has arrived. Bob Wilson
