Micro-mobility has the potential to change the way we live, and it couldn’t come at a better time. With the rising costs of fuel, and the UN climate panel and IPCC continuing to warn us about the pending dangers of climate change, the transition to electric transport and smaller modes of transportation is gaining more traction.
However, the industry is facing challenges, including one looming elephant in the room: the use of batteries poorly adapted to micro mobility uses, that require annual replacement.
Many electric scooter and bike OEMs have sourced cheaper batteries, with shorter life cycles, causing a growing mountain of e-waste, not to mention the costs of replacing these batteries each year.
While lithium-ion battery recycling initiatives are gaining steam, the industry would do well to look beyond the short-term solutions, and adopt energy storage battery systems with longer life-cycles to help prevent massive lithium-ion battery graveyard pile-ups.
We have been through this problem before. In the decade following adoption of flat-screen TVs, and the mass exodus away from old cathode-ray (CRT) televisions, the e-waste from this ill-planned technology transmission resulted in stockpiles of boxy TVs, an estimated 705 million, in the United States alone.
Because the CRTs contain mercury, the industry struggled with the sustainable disposal of the toxic e waste. It was costly, and complex, and left e-waste recyclers with very little incentive to actually process the waste.
Instead, they allowed piles of TVs to languish in their warehouses, often spilling out into their outdoor yards, where sun rays refracted off the glass of the TVs caused junkyard fires.
In micro mobility, we have the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of the past. With operators swapping a tsunami of conventional lithium-ion batteries on e-bikes and e-scooters, and few recycling options, we are well on our way to building another technology graveyard.
Like the dangers of CRT TV warehouses, these batteries are a safety hazard if not disposed of properly. While humanity might have a pattern of leaving problems for later generations to clean up, this is one we can easily handle ourselves.

The Rise of Micro-Mobility
Electric scooters, skateboards, and bikes are quickly becoming a popular choice for transportation across the globe. From personal ownership, the rental and sharing operations, people are discovering the fun, freedom, and functionality of these agile vehicles.
In fact, a recent McKinsey survey suggests that 70 percent of consumers are open to micro-mobility solutions for their daily commutes.Globally, the micro-mobility market was valued at $25.42 billion in 2020 and could expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.7 percent from 2021 to 2028.
With reports suggesting that the micro-mobility industry could play a significant role in the decarbonization of cities, this sector is poised for explosive growth.
If we continue to our prodigal use of lower performing batteries we put ourselves on the improvident path of excessive e-waste, and squandering the rare earth minerals used to manufacture them.
Alternatively, we need to look at emerging and reconfigured battery chemistries that provide longer life cycles. This scenario could eliminate the sheer number of batteries set aside for recycling every year.

Recycling Micro-Mobility The micro-mobility industry relies heavily on conventional lithium-ion batteries as an industry-standard composition. While they have proven reliable, there are some noted disadvantages to these chemistries.
They age and lose capacity quickly and frequently fail after 1-2 years. According to the Electric Bike Report, most lithium-ion batteries on e-bikes today are good for about 500 to 1,000 charge cycles, equating to 1-2 years for micro-mobility businesses with high turnover rates.
As the batteries reach their life cycle threshold, there are very few options for recycling, so they are usually placed in long-term storage facilities instead.
Moveover, during the recycling process, if not correctly handled, conventional lithium-ion chemistries that contain oxides from nickel, manganese, aluminum, or cobalt are prone to fire. This is known as thermal runaway, and it occurs when the barrier between the cathode and the anode ruptures.
When micro-mobility batteries retire, they often have endured a lifetime of many bumps and bruises. As a result, when these batteries pile up in the hopes of being recycled one day, a fire risk remains.
However, the risk of a self-ignition fire does not exist in the case of lithium ferro phosphate (also known as lithium iron phosphate) or lithium titanate battery chemistries.
There have already been several major fires in metal-recovery facilities, and the industry is experiencing other storage fire issues on ships.
According to a recent EPA report, more than 240 fires were caused by lithium-ion batteries at 64 facilities between 2013 and 2020. In addition, if the software that operates a battery is not designed correctly, it can also cause ignition problems.
Unlike simple lead-acid batteries, recycling conventional lithium-ion batteries is costly and labor-intensive. Lead-acid batteries are pulverized, and then the components are mechanically separated. Conventional lithium-ion batteries must be manually tested and disassembled.
According aBBC report, recycling plants shred components down into a powder, and then that powder is either melted (pyrometallurgy) or dissolved in acid (hydrometallurgy).
But, lithium-ion batteries are made up of many different parts that could explode if disassembled incorrectly. And, even when plants break down batteries in this way, the components aren’t easy to reuse.
So, the problem remains, as we see battery swapping take off in micro-mobility with expensive and infrequent recycling opportunities, we need to ask ourselves if warehouses full of combustible batteries littered around our cities and communities is a responsible outcome.

Leveraging Higher Life-Cycle Batteries The energy storage industry can provide new technology and re-evaluate past proven chemistries for the micro-mobility space.
We need batteries that can charge rapidly while not degrading life cycles because batteries with fast charge times and longer lifespans could save operators as much as 50 percent on their operating costs and drastically lower the number of batteries sitting in a warehouse. Longer life cycles mean less battery swapping and recycling.
And, if the 2021 micro-mobility growth rate in sales of 240 percent continues into the next several years, the use of batteries will also increase. There will be an unprecedented demand for high-cycle threshold batteries because there are very few ways to handle the existing stock of used lithium-ion batteries.
We must focus our eyes on our immediate predicament to develop energy storage solutions that will not need to be recycled as often.
By engineering more robust energy storage systems, and reducing the sneer number of batteries stockpiled in warehouses waiting for a cost-effective recycling method, we buy ourselves more time to fine-tune recycling solutions for existing systems.
Charlie Welch is CEO and co-founder of California-based ZapBatt, a battery provider for global markets, including mobility, small and large infrastructures, and other consumer products.
As an aerospace engineer, Charlie spent seven years at aerospace and defense technology companies in Applied Research, where his job was to research and optimize as many battery chemistries on the planet as possible.