China EV battery recycling is entering its first serious stress test. After building the world’s largest electric vehicle market, China now has a fast-growing stock of worn-out battery packs that need to be reused, dismantled or processed without turning the EV boom into a new pollution problem.
Annual sales of battery-powered vehicles in China, including fully electric cars and plug-in hybrids, rose from about 1 million in 2018 to more than 16 million in 2025. EV batteries usually last about eight years, so the early mass-market packs are now reaching retirement age.
China reported 400,000 metric tons of EV battery waste last year, according to government data cited in the reporting. A joint study by researchers in China and the United States projected that the total could reach 1.69 million metric tons in 2030 and 22.39 million metric tons by 2040.
Why is China struggling to recycle EV batteries?
China has built a formal recycling system, but the economics still favor a messier route. Retired lithium-ion batteries contain valuable materials, so informal recyclers can pay sellers more by skipping costly safety checks, careful dismantling and pollution controls.
Beijing started setting up a certified EV battery recycling system in 2018. More than 150 companies have since been placed on a government “white list” that allows them to process retired vehicle batteries. By 2023, those certified companies had 623,000 metric tons of annual processing capacity, more than 1.5 times the batteries retired that year.
The capacity exists mostly on paper if owners and middlemen sell elsewhere. Certified recyclers processed only about 25 percent of retired batteries in 2023. Yicai, a Chinese financial news outlet, reported earlier this year that its reporters tried to contact every company on the white list and found more than 100 were no longer operating or could not be reached.
Researchers described China’s effort to control informal battery recycling as a “losing battle” in a paper titled “The Urgency to Regulate Informal EV Battery Recycling in China.” Laixiang Sun, a University of Maryland professor and coauthor, told Inside Climate News that improper dismantling can lead to poisoning, explosions, fires, wastewater dumping and contamination of groundwater and soil.
The risks are not theoretical. In a 2024 case announced in Jiangxi Province, officials found that an uncertified company had improperly dismantled 364 metric tons of waste lithium iron phosphate batteries. The contamination killed vegetation across 6 acres of forest and more than 420 cubic feet of standing timber.
Yan Wang, a Worcester Polytechnic Institute mechanical engineering professor and cofounder of the US battery recycler Ascend Elements, told Inside Climate News that batteries contain lithium, copper and nickel. “You cannot dump them into the environment,” he said.
What happens to retired EV batteries?
Batteries that still have useful life can be repurposed for less demanding jobs. That requires testing and grading packs, modules and sometimes individual cells, which is slow and expensive. A Tesla Model Y battery pack can contain more than 4,000 cells.
Informal operators can avoid that work and sell used cells into unapproved uses, including aftermarket range-extending battery packs. In November, a Xiaomi SU7 sedan caught fire in Changzhou, Jiangsu Province. The owner later told Sanxiang Metropolis Daily that the battery involved was an aftermarket range extender rather than the original factory-installed pack.
Material recovery is the more durable business case. Recyclers can turn batteries into “black mass,” a powder containing lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese, graphite and other materials, then separate and refine those inputs for new batteries. Some advanced processes can recover more than 95 percent of certain critical materials, according to the reporting.
Sun’s research estimated uncertified recyclers handled nearly 270,000 metric tons of retired batteries in 2023. Without stronger intervention, the study projected informal channels could take 1.26 million tons in 2030 and 16.79 million tons by 2040.
A national regulation that took effect April 1 requires automakers to take greater responsibility for collecting and recycling used batteries, similar to Europe’s battery passport approach. Batteries removed from retired vehicles must go through approved channels and certified companies.
Sun said government action will not be enough by itself. Automakers and vehicle owners also have to accept lower margins or smaller payouts if China wants its certified recycling system to handle the wave it can already see coming.
This story draws on original reporting from WIRED.
