Specialized Partners with Tesla Co-Founder for a New Battery Recycling Solution
Specialized is looking to offer recycling for all of its e-bike batteries by the end of the year thanks to a partnership with one of Tesla's co-founders Jeffrey Straubel and his company Redwood Materials, The Verge reports.
Founded by Straubel in 2017, Redwood Materials previously focused on recycling electric car batteries and breaking down any waste materials from Tesla's own battery-making process.
Chris Yu, chief product officer at Specialized, told The Verge: "Generally, the bikes will long outlast the packs for the typical user, and so it’s always been in the back of our minds: what do we do about them?"
Specialized hopes that in the future it will recover any e-bike battery using its network of dealers and retail partners before shipping to Redwood's recycling facility in Northern Nevada. The first step of the recycling process is working out what inside the battery can be recycled, this includes connectors, wires and plastics. Next, a chemical process will begin removing elements like nickel, cobalt and copper. A percentage of these materials are put back into the process of making more batteries.
Currently, Redwood aims to complete the recycling process domestically in the US. Often electronic waste can end up being shipped to developing countries rather than companies dealing with it themselves. A two-year investigation by the Basel Action Network (BAN) in 2019 found that 352,474 metric tonnes of electronic waste was illegally shipped from the EU. Shipments from UK council recycling centers ended up in Nigeria, Tanzania and Pakistan.
Specialized plans to have a pathway for all batteries to the Redwood Materials recycling plant by the end of 2021. Chris Yu explained to The Verge that this could mean customers being made aware of the service through dealers or showing the expected end-of-life date of the better through the Specialized smartphone app. Specialized said it has been trialling the process and so far 100% of the batteries it collected have gone to Redwood. While Specialized is not unique in offering a recycling program it does seem like it is trying to offer a more complete solution.
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If you're on an e-bike, you generally want the fun without all the work and and that's okay.
I see kids (10 y/o) with their fathers both(!) on E-bikes.
Sad times
And what's your beef with simply having options? A Levo SL or Orbea Rise are almost the same weight as a typical enduro rig now. You can pedal them pretty easily without assist. Or, when you want to, for whatever reason, you can then call on the assist. How can that possibly be a bad thing?
The author of the article Bryan Haycock’s fitness program is HST (hypertrophic specific training). Science is science and again, no one pulls 800 lbs or snatches 200 kilos doing 8-10 rep range.
A 21 rep squat program will absolutely increase leg size but it won’t have the same return on investment as a 5/3/1 on your 1 rep max. Different problems require different solutions.
There are actual peer reviewed articles on this kind of stuff, not just fitness articles written by someone trying to sell you on their program.
If you want the simple take on it, here you go: www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/news/20120427/high-reps-with-low-weights-builds-muscle-too
But if you have similar credible science to show the opposite, lay it on me!
It says nothing of high rep hypertrophy training vs low rep strength training.
A quick google search found this peer reviewed article looking at ACTUAL different rep ranges. 2-4s vs 8-10s. Found that low rep had a statistically greater increase in 1 rep Max squats and higher rep had a statistically greater muscle size in the moderate rep ranges (DUH).
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5131226
You will absolutely get stronger and bigger lifting weight at any rep range. You can’t get grow your muscle without getting stronger and you can’t get stronger without getting bigger muscle mass. But lifting heavy singles will lead to a higher ROI on strength gains and lifting higher rep will lead to a higher ROI on hypertrophy.
None of this is groundbreaking stuff. If you can’t see the difference between different training methodologies and their different outcomes than I am done with this back and forth. Continue to think whatever you want.
“ According to a 2018 review from Frontiers in Physiology, high reps and low reps appear to be equally effective for getting bigger[*].
The review compared lower-rep sets with over 60% of 1 rep max (1RM) to higher-rep sets 60% of 1RM taken to temporary muscular failure. And it found that increases in muscle size were similar for both methods.”
This aint got nothing to do with sound - unless you are talking about the clunk from the EP8 motor...
But a marketing statement to the effect of "It's really hard but we're looking into it" isn't really enough to convince me that it's going to be a success.
If they do, I'll be 100% on board with them as a company. I'm real concerned by the long term waste we're creating with all these batteries without any really solid way of recycling them already in place. Making the effort here is a big deal, and succeeding will be huge.
Props to them. I'm excited to see how it unfolds.
I appreciate the perspective in your comment, I think it should be us who keeps the public up to date on the progress of an announcement of this kind, we'll do our best to inform you as this process evolves. Exciting times.
But let's not all be party poopers, I hope this catches on. I dispose of probably 2-3 megawatts of good Li batteries every year, I use a recycler, but honestly have no idea where the batteries go after they leave. I know the Pb-Acid batteries are recycled, but there is a lot of Pb and not much else in a Pb-Acid. Li-Ion have almost nothing useful to recycle, there's a fair amount of aluminum, some iron, cobalt, nickel, carbon (this is all chemistry dependent) and some type of plastic typically in the separator and then electrolyte. The electrolyte is nasty stuff and typically very volatile, especially if aerosolized. I imagine the cost of reclaiming the aluminum is probably more than what its worth as a raw material, and the rest of the metals are very toxic and have to be hard to separate and are in such tiny quantities that I can't even fathom where the breakeven point is on the economy of scale.
When it comes to pouch cells, there is almost nothing worth recycling.
I know Nissan wants to reclaim the used Leaf batteries and repurpose them for static applications like uninterrupted power supply, grid stabilization, peak shedding, etc. which is a far better solution in my opinion. If you were to take a 30kWh Leaf battery that still has 15-20kWh of energy, you'd have a pretty serious storage bank that wouldn't take up much footprint and could be cycle-optimized to operate for years with minimal further degradation.
The only thing that big giant companies will always have against them is Red Tape, which new modern companies dont, making them more flexible to invent new things from scratch.
actual bane of my existence as someone who also works s&r at a local specialized shop. i could write three paragraphs complaining about the snafus i have had with this exact issue. long story short, FedEx sucks and will even threaten to destroy the battery if there is an issue, which i believe is criminal in and of itself, which i remind them of every time they do it.
Litecoin to the moon!!!!
A battery going into a landfill? What year is it? 1960?
Contractors (Fencing, Framing, etc) who use a lot of PT lumber have to store it somewhere until they can find a place to accept it, but it is not possible for many because they have literally thousands of pounds of PT lumber waste every week and visit the landfills every day. Many contractors can literally go out of business or many will resort to illegal dumping, shredding it, or burning it because they can't store it. Totally ridiculous how they created a complete mess of problems when they could have planned it out and had solutions first before banning it.
I get it. PT lumber has chemicals, but PT lumber can last much, much longer than regular lumber, so that reduces a lot of waste in itself. However, if you ban PT lumber, it will lead to having to use perhaps double amount of lumber in the long run. That is way more cutting of trees. Still the authorities and politicians need to think things through before banning things. They need to work out the problem rather than creating problems.
www.nooooooooooooooo.com
1. Make a pile here
2. Ship that pile somewhere else, make a bigger pile
3. Send that bigger pile to Nigeria/Tanzania/Pakistan
Done!
You should avoid double negatives, and instead should have written, “your simplistic, one brain cell logic never impresses me”. Using improper grammar when trying to insult someone’s intelligence is beautifully ironic though. Thanks for the laugh.
Not letting you skirt that carbon fiber point. So what say you, hmmm?
And yep, if I have my way, I'll add an S-Works Levo SL to my quiver. And I'll ride it for a good 8-10 years.
Some people are funny - driving a V8 pickup to shuttle the bikes or to reach the bikepark but complaining about those riding an Ebike for some reason.
Analog biker vs. E-biker
Roadie vs. MTB
Gravel vs. Roadie
Hardtail vs. Full Sus.
Oh dear, some never get tired and have to boost their ego by pretending „i‘m better then you are!“
Chill dude, chill!
No one has to judge someone else for riding an ebike! What do you tell all the MXers? Are they also all lazy and stupid?
What about DHers using the lifts in the bike parks?
Why ever riding a car? Isn‘t this because of laziness as well? You could walk after all, no matter how long it takes, earn it!
What about those who love to bike but do have some health conditions or killed their knee joints with analog biking or such.
Guys, just stop the hate and let people choose for themselves what‘s best for them - period!
of the other issues or what your view may be on E bikes.
E-bike suspected cause of huge Australia house fire
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-56457294
AS the consumer will pay the costs, will that mean 15k bikes?
ONLY a few months to wait to find out?
Isn't it always the case of selling you stuff and then finding ways to get rid of the waste somewhere far away where the shits don't fly back into your face? Why didn't people think of these things ahead of time - oh wait - the direction of money only goes one way!
i advocate against because there is a clear correlation between a lack of the former when a motor is present.
not to mention, chihuahuas may be more aggressive than pitbulls, but pitbulls still have the capability to and actually do cause more damage.