Panel Discussion with the experts of the automotive, recycling, and battery industry about the economy's status quo and future regarding sustainability. What influence has the electrification of the mobility and what factors are crucial to actually achieve a green energy transition?
In this conversation:
Peter Mertens, Automotive Industry Veteran & Investor
Nils Steinbrecher, Senior Director Sales, Key Account Management and Marketing, Cylib
Nikola Vekić, Consultant, EV Battery Supply Chain, McKinsey & Company
Tilmann Vahle, Senior Manager Circular Batteries, SYSTEMIQ
How far away are we from a circular economy?
This panel discusses the future of e-mobility through the lens of a circular economy, emphasizing battery lifecycle, recycling, second-life usage, data sharing, and regulatory steps to scale sustainable practices across Europe and globally:
- Battery materials and production dominate emissions in EV's; aim for 30% of raw materials from recycling
- Need for an ecosystem linking second life, refurbishing, and recycling to reduce costs and ensure material supply
- Battery passports and data sharing are crucial for transparency, safety, and efficiency in the circular economy
MODERATOR: Welcome everyone to our first panel discussion, hosted and organized by Circunomics. This is the first in a series of events we plan to broadcast over the coming months. Thank you especially to Antonio for organizing today's session.
When we speak about e-mobility, we often only talk about emissions saved during road operations. But the bigger picture — production, reuse, and recycling — is frequently forgotten. The battery of an electric vehicle is its most valuable component, representing up to 60% of its cost and a major share of production emissions. Today we want to draw attention to the full impact of EV batteries.
Our panelists today are:
Dr. Peter Mertens — with 35 years in the automotive industry, including as a board member at Audi, CTO at Volvo, and executive at General Motors. Since 2020, Peter has been investing in and advising promising startups within the mobility ecosystem.
Nils Steinbrecher — Managing Director at TESS Sustainable Battery Solutions for the APAC and EMEA regions. Niels brings several years of experience in sustainable solutions, having worked at DuPont and VDE Renewables in Singapore. TESS is a leading lifecycle solution provider with deep expertise in e-waste and battery waste recycling.
Nikola Vekić — a background in geology, with experience as a research associate at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology studying global battery raw material supply chains, and currently a Senior Analyst for Battery Insights at McKinsey & Company.
Tilmann Vahle — Senior Manager and Lead for Circular Batteries at Systemiq. Systemiq is a think-and-do tank for sustainable projects. In April this year, they began leading the Battery Pass project, funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection, together with 11 leading companies including Audi, BMW, and BASF.
Each speaker will have two minutes to present one key message, followed by two to three questions. The YouTube audience is welcome to submit questions in the comments — we will address them in the open discussion at the end.
Peter, please go ahead.
PETER MERTENS: E-mobility is finally taking off, with growth rates stronger than we anticipated. Whether this is driven by a better product offer or by demand and sustainability awareness is debatable — but the momentum is real.
The challenge is on the raw materials side. Precious metals are becoming extremely expensive, and some — like cobalt — are mined under conditions none of us would want to support. This is a real contradiction. During the chip crisis, OEMs managed rising material costs by increasing vehicle prices. That approach is reaching its limit, because cars need to remain affordable — and EV's are still significantly more expensive than combustion engine vehicles.
What we need is an interconnected ecosystem where every component — batteries, vehicles, energy storage, recycling — is linked. Cars and batteries delivered to customers must be part of a second life, a third life, and ultimately a material chain for new batteries, with at least 30% of raw materials coming from recycling. This is supported by the political push toward renewable energy — solar and wind — which will drive strong demand for local household energy storage.
The bottom line: we need an ecosystem that ensures batteries are reused, refurbished, and ultimately recycled, with a minimum of 30% raw material recovery.
MODERATOR: Studies suggest we will have around 3.4 million used battery packs to manage by 2025. How ready is the automotive industry for this, particularly when it comes to second life?
PETER: From a high-level view, they are not ready. Most OEMs have done some studies and invested a little in recycling, but very little has been achieved on second and third life. OEMs still struggle with selling cars — managing dealer networks, transitioning to online sales. I do not see them becoming heavily engaged in second life or selling batteries to utilities or households. That is not going to happen on its own. What is needed is a bridge toward battery reuse and recycling through third-party ecosystems.
MODERATOR: What is the best strategic model for OEMs to handle this?
PETER: There are essentially three models. Tesla operates a closed loop — a very different animal in every respect, and not necessarily the right model for the rest of the industry. Companies like VW, with nearly 10 million vehicles per year, believe they can manage it independently — I think that is a misperception of the complexity involved. The third model — and the one I believe is clearly the right direction — is for most OEMs to rely on third-party support: platforms like Circunomics providing analytics and a battery trading marketplace, combined with second and third-life users and recyclers at the other end of the value chain. This creates significant economies of scale. Joint forces — bringing in as many OEMs and lithium-ion battery users as possible — will deliver the highest returns.
MODERATOR: Thank you, Peter. Nils, the floor is yours.
NILS: I want to start with a quote from Gottlieb Daimler, who once said that global demand for automobiles would never surpass one million — because there would not be enough chauffeurs. Not long ago, people in Germany said EV's would never come. Now people say second life will never come. Things are changing fast, and we are all in this together.
At TESS, we look at the full battery value chain — from mining to OEM production, all the way to second life users. We operate what we call a 4R strategy:
1. Repair and Remanufacture — extending battery life back into first life. We received batteries from BYD in Singapore where many had missing cables or parts and could be quickly repaired without going to cell level. This is the most sustainable option: extend life as long as possible.
2. Repurpose and Reuse — this is why we work with Circunomics. OEMs will eventually be unable to simply recycle batteries that still have value. The Nike case in Germany is a useful analogy: NGOs found that Nike was shredding returned shoes that didn't fit, and there was public outrage. The same will happen with batteries. The European Commission is also pushing in this direction. Second life will come, even if OEMs are currently reluctant.
3 & 4. Recycle and Recover — mechanical treatment creates black mass, which contains the valuable materials. This is then refined through a hydrometallurgical process to recover cobalt hydroxide, lithium carbonate, graphite, and other materials — close to virgin quality. One of our clients, a large mobile phone manufacturer, sends phones to our Singapore plant. We sell the cobalt hydroxide to China, where it is accepted as a raw material and fed directly back into new battery production for that same company. That is a closed loop in practice.
MODERATOR: How willing are OEMs to share the data needed to drive this ecosystem, and what data is actually required?
NILS: As part of the Global Battery Alliance, we advocate for both second-life users and recyclers. Both need detailed battery information — composition, history, state of health. The EU Battery Passport is requiring this, and we are pushing for it to become mandatory for every battery brought to market.
Without a legal requirement, companies will not share data voluntarily. There are legitimate confidentiality concerns, and increasingly the battery is where the IP sits. As the EV chassis and motor become commoditized, the battery and Battery Management System are what differentiate a Tesla from a Mercedes. OEMs naturally want to protect that. BYD has announced it will enter the German market this year — this competitive pressure makes the data question even more sensitive.
MODERATOR: How should OEMs decide what to do with a battery when it returns — recycle or second life?
NILS: In the best case, the Battery Passport answers that question. When the OEM itself receives the battery, they have full BMS access and all the data they need. For third parties, the answer is fast testing. Currently, testing a battery module takes four to eight hours — that is not efficient at scale. Fast-testing equipment exists that can test 10 modules of a known type, align the system, and then run the remaining 90 through in under a second each. The two key inputs are: as much data as possible from the battery's history, and efficient fast-testing technology.
MODERATOR: Thank you, Nils. Nikola, please go ahead.
NIKOLA: We all know the EV battery market is going to be dynamic. We expect 60% of all new vehicle sales by 2030 to be electric, and all those EV's will eventually reach end of life. They will need to be handled sustainably and economically. Combined with clear recycling obligations, an effective recycling infrastructure will be inevitable.
How much material are we talking about? Several million tons of recyclable battery material are coming in the next decade, growing at 20% annually. The critical inflection point is 2030, when end-of-life battery packs will overtake production scrap as the main feedstock.
This implies the first and most important success factor: locking up feedstock now. You do this by partnering with gigafactory cell producers and OEMs. This is already happening — Lifecycle and LG, Redwood and Volkswagen, Primobius and Daimler are all examples.
Will recycling be economical? Yes — profit margins above 20% are achievable, depending on metal prices, recovery rates, plant utilization, and logistics costs.
Success factor two: strategic partnerships. Different entities have different core capabilities. Combining them creates cost synergies. The most obvious partnership is with a strong logistics player. Examples: Umicore and Audi, Solvay and Veolia in Europe; Redwood partnering with multiple waste management companies in the US.
Success factor three: process excellence. Maximizing recovery rates is non-negotiable — otherwise you are leaving money on the table. Pick the right process, make it robust, and run it consistently.
Attention to all three factors makes you a strong participant in what will be a $6 billion market, contributing to a truly circular economy.
MODERATOR: Will recycling capacity keep pace with the volume of batteries coming to market?
NIKOLA: In Europe, we have already seen over 20 recycling capacity announcements in just the past few years — more than enough to capture what is coming by 2030. The contrary risk is actually the case: not everyone will survive. Only the players who have secured enough feedstock share early on will make it through the first phase. A second wave will come with end-of-life batteries, but those entrants will not have the first-mover advantage.
MODERATOR: How do you see the split between batteries going to recycling versus second life evolving?
NIKOLA: A few variables will determine the pathway: state of health, residual capacity, and chemistry. Our view is that until at least 2030, metal prices will remain high, meaning nickel-based batteries will go to recycling — OEMs and cell producers need those materials back. LFP, on the other hand, is more suited to second life due to its exceptional cycle life stability, which continues to improve. The million-mile battery concept, if it becomes reality, could change the entire recycling-versus-second-life equation again.
MODERATOR: Thank you, Nikola. Tilmann, the floor is yours.
TILMANN: Thank you. I will speak about the Battery Passport — specifically the Battery Pass project that SYSTEMIQ is leading, funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection.
The Battery Passport has been a prominent concept in recent years, championed by the Global Battery Alliance — a World Economic Forum-initiated multi-stakeholder consortium using digital tracking and tracing technologies to support a sustainable global battery industry ramp-up.
The most important milestone driving this forward is the EU Battery Regulation, currently being finalized. It will require a Battery Passport for every battery larger than 2 kWh entering the European market, starting in 2026. In industrial terms, that is essentially tomorrow.
SYSTEMIQ, together with partners including BASF, Audi, the Fraunhofer Institute, Twice Circular, Mercedes, GS1, and the Global Battery Alliance, is working to create technical standards and guidance that allow companies to implement this efficiently — a cohesive, interoperable, non-competitive system at low cost.
What does the Battery Passport actually consist of? According to EU regulation, two elements:
- An Electronic Exchange System (EES) — a macroeconomic platform that registers publicly available information for each battery model.
- A Battery Passport linked to each individual battery, making data available including composition, responsible sourcing, carbon footprint, and recycled content.
The value of the Battery Passport spans all dimensions of sustainability — economic, socioeconomic, and business value. It enables efficient testing, efficient handling, and makes a circular economy operationally possible.
MODERATOR: What data is required to make the Battery Passport truly successful?
TILMANN: Every stakeholder defines success differently. For SYSTEMIQ, as a change-making organization, success means supporting an efficient circular economy, making EV economics work, and ensuring that the sourcing of materials for millions of batteries is done as responsibly as possible. Every human activity has an environmental and social impact — especially extraction. We need to reinvent mining at scale across lithium, cobalt, nickel, and other materials, making it as responsible and environmentally sound as possible, while not letting that become a barrier to the urgently needed decarbonization of mobility, which accounts for roughly a third of global carbon emissions.
Key data fields for the Battery Passport: material composition, responsible sourcing, carbon footprint, recycled content, and safe handling instructions. These need to be accessible to economic operators and the public.
MODERATOR: From 2026, every battery over 2 kWh must have a Battery Passport. What should the EU do next to further support the circular economy?
TILMANN: Circular economy is so much more than recycling. Ultimately every battery and all battery material should be recycled — that is already mandated under EU, US, and Chinese law. The real question is whether handling batteries responsibly during their lifetime becomes a cost burden or a business case. Nikola showed clearly that there is a viable business case.
Beyond recycling, second life is critical. But even during first life, integrating batteries into a renewable power grid is extremely important. The energy used to power a battery during driving determines a large part of its environmental footprint. What is still lacking is integration into green power grids and bidirectional charging infrastructure. This is incredibly fragmented today — essentially national laws with enormous complexity. Ideally, all batteries on wheels would charge bidirectionally, storing renewables and balancing the grid. Germany has taken a first step, but it is a tiny one. Consistent EU-wide regulatory action is needed.
The biggest hurdle for bringing first-life batteries into second life is lack of scale. To do this efficiently, you need an industrialized operation with efficient safety assessment. When a car battery is placed in a stationary use, it legally becomes a different product — it must be recertified for safety and performance, including CE marking. Doing that on a heterogeneous incoming stream of batteries is not trivial. Scale and more efficient technologies are what will unlock this market. Once raw material prices moderate in the 2030s, the second-life battery market will grow significantly.
PETER: All the volume projections we saw today I would consider conservative. EV penetration in Europe — and likely in China — will grow faster than expected. The automotive industry missed out on almost every major global technology trend over the past 20 years, and we missed the battery transition badly. We are now dependent on Asia — Japan, Korea, and very much China — and we need to break that dependency. The only strong lighthouse example of what is possible in Europe is Northvolt — mining, development, and battery cell production in Kiruna, using hydroelectric power, almost entirely sustainable. We missed 10 to 15 years. The question now is what comes next — if solid-state batteries are the answer, most of the research and IP is currently in Japan and the US, not Europe.
NILS: I want to add two points. First, energy security and raw material security are rarely aligned with sustainability — but for batteries, they are. Urban mining and keeping materials in Europe actually supports sustainability, not just security. The EU is strongly pushing to keep battery materials within the European Union — the Vice President of the European Commission visited our new Rotterdam site recently. That political alignment is real and important.
Second, on China: over 90% of batteries used in European OEMs still come from China. There is a trust gap — not just politically, but technically. Not many of those batteries have been in cars for more than 10 years yet. That trust will build over time as people see how long these batteries actually last.
NIKOLA: We see a huge dependency on China at all levels. It is being addressed most aggressively at the cell production level — over 30 gigafactory announcements in Europe alone, corresponding to over a terawatt-hour of capacity, which would make Europe self-sufficient if all of them come online. Not all will, but the activity is real. On cathode active material and raw materials, progress is happening but less aggressively. The next critical step for the EU is protection — the cheapest cells are coming from China, and the European industry needs to survive that competition. A carbon border tax is one mechanism: if you use unsustainable production methods, you pay a tariff. The Battery Passport also needs to include design-for-recycling metrics — binder types, separator materials — which are critical for recyclers to determine economic recovery rates.
AUDIENCE QUESTION (via YouTube): How do consumers and car owners benefit from increasing circular economy regulation?
TILMANN: Fossil resources will become more expensive and more constrained over time. We need a more resource-efficient way of living, including mobility. A circular economy makes better use of materials and embedded energy. Mobility-as-a-Service and car-sharing are more resource-efficient models. In the medium to long term, a more resource-independent economy secures the mobility lifestyles we want. That is a massive benefit for society and consumers.
NILS: Every individual has a carbon footprint they can actually calculate and influence. You can choose what vehicle you drive, what energy you use. If you drive an EV powered by sustainably produced batteries and charged with green electricity, you can potentially be carbon zero as an individual. That is something combustion engines can never deliver.
MODERATOR: We still have questions in the feed — we will answer them in the YouTube comments section. Thank you to everyone on the panel for your time and insights, and thank you to the audience for joining our first session. The level of engagement shows just how important and timely this topic is. We look forward to having you back for the next discussion in the series.
ALL PANELISTS: Thank you! It was a pleasure. Bye!
