There is no question that the e-bike revolution is here, with sales of electric bikes of all variety surging. According to Deloitte, 130 million e-bikes are expected to be sold between 2021 and 2023. Samsung Battery Solutions is aware of the issues that lurk in the future of an increasingly bigger e-bike market: more e-bikes and wider e-bike use will eventually result in a growing volume of lithium-ion battery packs that are returned after use.

Edwin Hexspoor CEO Samsung Battery Solutions; “Usually there are no options other than to discard the batteries and recycle part of the raw materials. But we strive to minimize waste streams and maximize reuse of the battery cells we sell. Chief among our ambitions is to find a second life for all those e-bike batteries when they are no longer suitable for their original purpose, but are still functioning. Rather than send them to a recycling plant, we want to give battery cells a second life.”

The Samsung Battery Solutions team is working together with a range of partners, from knowledge leaders to industrial practitioners, to develop viable second life battery applications.

Edwin Hexspoor; “We are currently setting up partnerships with stakeholders to explore collection, testing and reuse of battery cells. It is our ambition to establish an efficient supply chain which ensures each battery cell has a maximum productive life. If we crack that challenge it will greatly reduce waste and set our business up for more circularity”.

In the second half of 2021 Samsung Battery Solutions plans to announce how it will collect e-bike and other batteries for cell-reuse. It will then also engage with potential partners who would rather give us their used batteries for a second life then to treat them as waste.