THE BATTERY REPAIR SHOP

Batteries can now be revived, rather than just recycled, thanks to a UK firm's special test

- Jesse Crosse

When an EV's battery wears out through use and age or goes wrong, what happens to it? The likeliest outcomes are being packed off for a less arduous 'second life' and being recycled. The second option is drastic, involving shredding and incineration. While recycling and recovering key materials such as lithium is vital, surely repairing a part of the car worth up to 40% of its total value would be a preferable option? British company Autocraft Solutions Group advocates that there should be more emphasis on this third option: properly repairing and maintaining EV batteries, as we do with combustion engines in conventional cars.

Its core business has been remanufacturing engines since the 1970s, and it became involved in battery manufacturing for niche projects in 2006. Since then, it has spent years perfecting and patenting a unique method of testing and repairing EV batteries called Revive, which can pinpoint faults at cellular level. It can also evaluate the health of individual cells to establish with certainty how much life they have left.

Because of the speed of introducing EVS to the market, Autocraft believes vehicle manufacturers may have been overly optimistic about the reliability of battery technology.