The remarketing sector has a key role to play in fostering electric vehicle (EV) battery repair and recycling, the latest member meeting of the Vehicle Remarketing Association (VRA) heard this week.
Experts explained the need to further develop a resilient, circular battery economy in the UK – and how this vision requires support from businesses involved in all aspects of used EV preparation and sales.
Robin Brundle, co-founder of lithium-ion battery recycler Recyclus, said: “We must ensure batteries are not exported for recycling. We have already paid for the highly valuable materials they contain and should maximise the opportunity to reuse them to enhance our own manufacturing and security.
“Vehicle remarketers have an important part to play here by partnering with certified UK recycling providers, ensuring safe collection and storage, engaging insurers to strengthen corporate responsibility for end-of-life battery recycling, and lobbying for battery producer responsibility to fund local recycling.”
Antonia Stephenson, director of operations for EV Battery Solutions, Cox Automotive, said battery repair was essential to ensuring a viable used EV sector.
“As batteries move out of manufacturer warranties, safe, compliant and economic repair services need to be accessible. With the rapid pace of development in EV batteries, there is a good chance that direct replacement batteries won’t be available.
“Repair is likely to be the only option if you want to keep vehicles on the road and maintain the used vehicle market. The best way to ensure this can be done is to establish repair programs early.”
Abhishek Sampat, head of electric vehicles at BCA, said repair was increasingly being seen as a viable option by remarketing customers. “Understandably, cost is the key driver. If a battery can be restored economically – and it is important to stress that many of the most common issues are not complex and can be resolved in a matter of hours by the right staff and equipment – customers will choose to repair.”
The current situation for battery state-of-health companies was explored in detail through a video link with Roland Gagel of CARA, the car remarketing association of Europe, who discussed his organisation’s industry-standard battery testing scheme.
Oliver Phlipott, CEO of Generational, complimented the CARA initiative. “The work done by CARA is impressive – it’s the only scheme of its kind worldwide and is playing an important role in enhancing battery confidence.”
The rapid growth of the EV sector was proving a challenge for battery state of health providers, said Alex Johns, business development partner at MOBA: “The speed with which EVs, especially from Chinese new entrants, are being launched creates a challenge for everyone in our sector, ensuring we have the ability to accurately assess them. So far, we are largely keeping up, which is obviously important to maintaining the viability of these cars in the used sector.”
Nikolaus Mayerhofer, founder, AVILOO, added that battery testing was increasingly progressing from just measuring battery capacity: “We see safety as a growing issue. It happens rarely, but if an EV battery goes wrong, the outcome is sometimes dramatic. Testing can identify the potential for problems occurring, as well as providing information that helps workshops trace and repair faults.”
Finally, Nick Press, partnerships director at Autotrader, spoke on the state of the new and used car market, highlighting a recent marked fall in demand for prestige ICE cars in the 3-5-year-old bracket, believed to have been prompted at least in part by the growth of the used EV sector.
“This has been a resilient part of the market for many years, but it seems some buyers are now choosing to either switch to a new car from one of the Chinese new entrants or the EV version of a 3-5-year-old ICE model. The current price of fuel is making used electric cars look highly attractive from a running cost point of view.”
The VRA member meeting was held at Wilson’s Queensferry auction site, the recent subject of a four-year, £10 million investment. Based at the headquarters of the town’s old steelworks, which once employed 16,000 people, it features stained glass, 19th-century Italian tiles and a staircase identical to the Titanic’s.
Ricky Wilson, director at Wilson’s Auctions, said: “While, like all auction businesses, we’ve invested heavily in technology in recent years, we still see ourselves as very much a people business that relishes face-to-face meetings, so we are very pleased to be able to share these beautifully restored premises here at Queensferry with so many of our friends from across the remarketing sector.”
Philip Nothard, chair at the VRA, said: “This was an extremely well-attended and vital VRA meeting. The emergence of a range of services supporting the life cycle of motive batteries is essential to the EV market as it grows, and today, we provided our members with in-depth briefings on how the current picture needs to evolve.”
Further details about attending VRA meetings can be obtained by emailing info@thevra.co.uk.
