The future of battery life cycle management

The Environment Ministers of the European Union agreed in the summer of 2022 that all new vehicles within the EU should be emission-free from 2035 onwards. This means that no new cars with an internal combustion engine may be manufactured and sold from that time onwards. Instead, only climate-neutral vehicles will be permitted. Electric cars in particular have become increasingly popular during the last few years; the number of new registrations is increasing. According to ‘statista’, more than three million electric cars were registered around the world in 2020 – over 870,000 more than in the previous year. In Europe alone, the number of new registrations of electric cars reached almost 880,000 in 2021. ‘statista’ states that there are now almost eleven million electric cars on the road all over the world (figure as of July 2022).

These developments are not only creating enormous changes for automobile manufacturers – logistics specialists, too, are having to adapt their processes to the new standards. Florian Karlstedt talks about the challenges of manufacturing electric cars and the various stages of a lithium-ion battery’s life, what is known as battery life cycle management (Logistics People Community has already reported on this). He explains the difference between the so-called first life and the second life of a battery. In addition, he reveals how the service life of a battery partly depends on consumers’ behaviour and why repairing batteries is the greatest challenge for the automotive and logistics sectors at the moment.  

This episode is currently only available in German. You can find the podcast with German and English subtitles here.