Methodology and Application of Electric Vehicles Battery Packs Redesign for Circular Economy

Li-Ion packs are high added-value products with great amounts of critical materials (e.g. Lithium and Cobalt), therefore an effective circular economy strategy is mandatory for these components. Nevertheless, commercial electric vehicles' batteries are not designed to be easily, safely and cost-effectively disassembled, tested and remanufactured or recycled. To overcome this industrial limitation, this paper presents a circular-economy-oriented redesign study for e-mobility batteries. Through a structured design criteria evaluation methodology (House of Quality), product's features impacting the most on circular economy design requirements have been assessed.