Recycling Electric Vehicles

Car manufacturers and governments work together with the conscientious goal of ensuring that as much as possible of a car’s remaining components can be recycled at the end of the vehicle’s life.

 Many car manufacturers are taking further steps toward that goal. In the early 1980s, Mercedes Benz set the tone by using a good deal of recycled materials in the production of their vehicles, and today you will find that many other car manufacturers have followed suit and are using respectable percentages of recycled materials in their new cars.  

 In Europe, all cars that were built after 1980 must be recycled at the end of their lives, ensuring at least 85 percent reuse of the contents.

 Car manufacturers today are held legally responsible for ensuring that their manufactured cars are recycled properly at the end of their lives. This directive results in over 90 percent scrapped car content being reused, in most cases via vehicle recycling.

 While electric cars are regarded as being highly beneficial to the environment, one cannot confirm as yet if their end life materials are otherwise more recyclable than other cars. It is highly unlikely that there will be a substantial difference. Battery recycling has been an on-going program, one easily motivated by the high value of the metals found in electric car batteries, as well as those that can be salvaged from electric car motors. These incentives make it financially profitable for vehicle manufacturers to find success in their efforts to recycle their electric cars properly.