Australian mechatronics firm IM Group has launched a new program designed to repair, repurpose and sustainably dispose of batteries after they reach the end of their service life in hybrid and all-electric vehicles.
Dubbed ‘Infinitev’, the program offers three distinct services to dealers, workshops and electrification OEMs depending on the sort of battery and the condition it’s in once it has served its primary purpose in an electrified vehicle.
The first of these is essentially a reconditioning service in which batteries that are faulty, slow to charge or no longer performing at an effective level are repaired and recirculated as a used spare.
According to IM Group, it’s often only a handful of cells that cause faults or need repairing, meaning the bulk of the battery is still in good working order.
“Currently, electric vehicle (EV) batteries will fault after they lose about 20-30% of their capacity,” says the company.
“Often, this is due to a small number of individual cells bringing down the overall total capacity. Instead of the whole battery pack going to waste, Infinitev considers opportunities to reuse, repurpose and recycle them. Creating a circular economy for hybrid and electric vehicle batteries significantly reduces waste.”
IM Group says Infinitev’s battery remanufacturing exchange project is Australia’s first scalable component reuse and resource recovery program for retired battery packs from electrified vehicles.
If a battery – hybrid or EV – is too far gone to be reused in a vehicle application it’s then repurposed into an energy storage system developed in partnership with Sustainability Victoria, which provides reliable energy peak shaving, load levelling and potential off-grid power.
Nissan is doing something similar with the batteries of its first-generation Nissan LEAFs, which are being used to power sections of the local Nissan Casting Australia Plant (NCAP) in Melbourne – one of the Japanese brand’s major EV component production facilities.
When a battery reaches the end of its life and can’t be either reused or repurposed, the Infinitev program calls in IM Group’s relevant partners to strip the valuable materials and components from the battery to use in the construction of new units and then responsibly dispose of what’s left.
“Infinitev is unique in what it offers the automotive industry in the recovery and repair of faulty or end-of-life hybrid and electric batteries,” program general manager Dickson Leow said.
“Infinitev is the only service provider in the industry that offers a three-pronged program that considers battery reuse, repurpose and recycling opportunities, and the circular economy advantages.”
The end result is what IM Group describes as a sustainable circular economy – the automotive battery version of the circle of life.