I read with great interest Roger Willis’s On the Money column in the November issue of BDN and think his comments are spot on.
My business is recycling large lead acid batteries from the forklift truck industry where a rebate is paid (currently £500-plus per tonne) and am now very much involved in recycling lithium-ion batteries where the client is asked to pay anything between £3 and £6 a kilo.
What I do not think the motor industry has woken up to yet is the cost of replacing lithium-ion batteries and how this affects residual values going forward. I would not be prepared to consider an electric car for a long time yet, and the same applies to a motorcycle. Maeving have the right idea of being able to swap batteries over which means, in a lot of cases, charging the bike can be done much more conveniently.
Jim Hammond, Traction Recycling, Rayleigh, Essex