e-bikes are having a bit of a moment: at one point during the pandemic, sales of powered bicycles outpaced all others by a considerable margin. The appealing of easy, socially distanced rides can be hard to ignore, but the resulting boom in sales has led to a pivotal moment for e-bike makers: What do they do with the batteries once they can’t power rides anymore?
For Specialized, the third-largest e-bike producer in the United States, the answer came in the form of a partnership with former Tesla co-founder Jeffrey Straubel or more specifically, his firm Redwood Materials.
The bikes are built to last a lifetime, but the batteries typically run out of power after four and six years, said Chris Yu, chief product officer at Specialized. “Generally, the bikes will long outlast the packs for the typical user,”
Redwood Materials the Carson City, Nevada-based company was founded by Straubel in 2017 primarily as a recycler of electric car batteries. Redwood will assess those depleted bike batteries and do two things. First, the company identifies components like connectors and brackets that could feasibly be reused. Then, the batteries themselves are processed so elements like nickel, cobalt, and copper can be extracted and used once again in the battery production process.
This isn’t the first time and hopefully won’t be the last we’ve heard of e-bike companies considering the long-term sustainability of their products. Lime, a San Francisco-based short-range transportation company, recently announced a partnership earlier this month that would see some batteries no longer fit for use in e-bikes wedged into Bluetooth speakers. Still, when you consider the scores of e-bike batteries that will be depleted in the years after this pandemic-fueled sales boom, comprehensive plans to handle them responsibly need to be the norm, not the exception.
