With over a million electric batteries from Europe’s first wave of EV adoption nearing the end of their lives, there are increasing calls for Europe to ramp up battery recycling in preparation. Europeans started buying mass-produced battery electric cars as early as 2010, and those early EV batteries are set to die in the next several years.
According to some experts, this influx of decommissioned EV batteries could soon become one of the most prolific waste streams in Europe and globally if a robust battery recycling pipeline isn’t set up in time. European buyers purchased over 1.24 million battery electric vehicles in just the first half of 2026, and global sales exceeded 20 million units in 2025.
That’s a whole lot of batteries, and they have to go somewhere once they reach the end of their usable lifespans. Without proper recycling protocols, used electric vehicle batteries could significantly contribute to land and water pollution. Unfortunately, with the EV industry still in its infancy compared to the conventional auto industry, there is no established pipeline for recycling electric vehicle batteries at the end of their lives.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that the number of lithium-ion batteries, which are the batteries that power EVs, that will reach the end of their lifetime is slated to surge from the mid-2030s.
Before the end of the decade, the EV industry will have 1.2 million EV batteries that can’t reliably power an electric car, and experts predict the number will jump to a whopping 14 million batteries by 2040. The need for battery recycling is extremely significant, but the process presents a significant challenge: recycling an electric vehicle battery is notoriously expensive and time-consuming.
Each battery set for recycling has to be discharged, dismantled, and broken down into its components. The chemicals present in such batteries increase the risk of adverse reactions with toxic by-products like hydrofluoric acid, which makes battery recycling incredibly dangerous for workers. Such compounds can be so corrosive that they even damage equipment at recycling plants.
All these factors have made private firms quite reluctant to invest in EV battery recycling. Even so, European experts are urgently calling for a major expansion of EV battery recycling infrastructure to ensure the world is ready to manage the deluge of waste that will come when millions of electric vehicle batteries are ultimately retired.
A proper recycling pipeline will also allow for the extraction of raw materials like lithium, which are under incredible demand pressure from the rapidly growing EV industry.
As experts think of how best to ramp up the recycling of end-of-life EV batteries, it would be worthwhile to involve electric vehicle makers, such as Rivian Automotive Inc. (NASDAQ: RIVN), in this quest because involving auto firms could result in identifying solutions that are easier to implement and benefit all parties.
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