was posted a few hours ago by CNA, a Singaporean public broadcast service. It's got under 9 minutes of content. Their description is "Mongolia has been flooded with cheap, end-of-life hybrid vehicles from Japan, whose batteries fail quickly in the country’s brutal climate and rugged terrain." Before COVID, I remember seeing videos about how Priuses were everywhere in Mongolia. It seems they apparently do have a end of life NiMH battery recycling and disposal problem there. If you want to skip to that, skip to ~3:38 or so. Sorry I'm not active here much any more. I've moved onto BEVs and my current job keeps me very busy. My dad still has my former 06 Prius. It is still on its original HV battery even though it's past the 20 year mark now.
“Heat is the enemy” of the NiMH batteries and Toyota engineering got “less bad” but failed the terminal seals. If the overpressure vent had been done right and a smarter BMS, NiMH cells have unlimited life with a little distilled water every 5-10 years. Opportunities lost. Bob Wilson
This one is wild. Asia’s EVolution: How Mongolia became a dumping ground for Japan’s hybrid electric vehicles - CNA (watch the video on YouTube which is linked from the story). I wonder if demand for replacement packs from Mongolia is driving up the price or causing lack of supply worldwide. Pretty sure Toyota never expected this market.
Maybe merge this thread with: Asia's EVolution: How the Toyota Prius comes to die in Mongolia | PriusChat
Planned obsolescence isn't a lost opportunity its a feature of capitalism and its destroying our planet!
This is silly... Those dead modules have a valuable amount of nickel in them and whoever sells them to a recycler when nickel prices are peaking will make a fortune! Mongolia's government could generate revenue with this problem that's not a problem if they get off their butts and get to work. China is the biggest manufacturer in the world right next door and if Mongolia and China make a deal the problem is solved. But instead people's love of Prius in Mongolia is being framed as a waste dumping problem? That's BS and I bet there's a Nickel producer in China that is having these propaganda articles written because at the right price sending convoys of trucks to haul battery packs in from Mongolia is way more profitable than starting up a new nickel mine. Lastly, my favorite YouTube motorcycle tourist is traveling in Mongolia right now and its amazing to see her ride through such a desolate and beautiful landscape. Then when she heads into a town itstruly delightful to see nearly everyone driving around in a Prius. It's not a bad thing at all, its a beautiful thing. I've yet to see a single broke down Prius in her videos yet. And obviously they have to address DIY smelting operations by finding a buyer who's willing to recycle in a cleaner way. Itchy Boots - YouTube Here's the first of her 4 Mongolia videos uploaded so far:
This is silly... Those dead modules have a valuable amount of nickel in them and whoever sells them to a recycler when nickel prices are peaking will make a fortune! Mongolia's government could generate revenue with this problem that's not a problem if they get off their butts and get to work. China is the biggest manufacturer in the world right next door and if Mongolia and China make a deal the problem is solved. But instead people's love of Prius in Mongolia is being framed as a waste dumping problem? That's BS and I bet there's a Nickel producer in China that is having these propaganda articles written because at the right price sending convoys of trucks to haul battery packs in from Mongolia is way more profitable than starting up a new nickel mine. Lastly, my favorite YouTube motorcycle tourist is traveling in Mongolia right now and its amazing to see her ride through such a desolate and beautiful landscape. Then when she heads into a town itstruly delightful to see nearly everyone driving around in a Prius. It's not a bad thing at all, its a beautiful thing. I've yet to see a single broke down Prius in her videos yet. And obviously they have to address DIY smelting operations by finding a buyer who's willing to recycle in a cleaner way. Itchy Boots - YouTube Here's the first of her 4 Mongolia videos uploaded so far:
It may be that even though the nickel would be valuable it isn't economically competitive with making it fresh from ore. Pull the nickel out of ore and they get nickel and some other minerals, pull it out of batteries they get nickel and a pile of plastic which won't be economical to recycle. I guess they could always shovel the leftover plastic into a furnace at one of their power plants. It can't burn dirtier than the coal they also use.
Processing a ton of modules is going to give a massive amount more nickel and less waste than processing nickel from a ton of ore, especially when it comes to how much waste is in a ton of ore. All the battery re-builders I know in the US have to compete for a plentiful supply of modules ($7-$14 per) and large scale corporate metal recyclers are willing to pay as much for just the scrap value with their cost of removing the plastic and other materials figured in. What's more, one of my more prolific re-builder friends in Oregon saved up a decade of failed modules and sold them right when the Nickel market peaked and he had no problem finding a buyer and made way more money than he thought possible. I suspect the problem in Mongolia is no different than all the other problems in that country, which is its remote isolation from the rest of the world. Have a look at those videos... It's a truly desolate landscape!
The issue isn't whether the battery can be recycled, but import/export regulations that have changed to prevent the batteries from being shipped out of country for recycling. This is a recent development. NiMH is classified as non hazardous waste in the US, but that may not be the case elsewhere. The article doesn't differentiate much between chemistries in most of the discussion. Sounds like Mongolia's immediate concern is with lead acid starter batteries. Shops in Mongolia do refurbish packs. The article also makes it sound like Japan is sending dying used hybrids to Mongolia. This isn't the case. Many used cars get exported from Japan because of inspection costs. These cars are only 3 to 5 years old. Back to chemistries. NiMH should have no problem in the cold. The Alphard Toyota imports new to Mongolia still uses it. The gen4 Prius with NiMH was the last actual car they sold there. The number of used imports with Li-ion have likely gone up, and those batteries will have a rougher time in the cold. Нүүр хуудас | Official Webpage for Toyota Mongolia Some of the bing translations are a hoot. rpm/engine speed=Twists and turns My fave, torque=The Ultimate Power of Twisting
That's part of the attraction. Mongolia gets really, really cold. Lead acid batteries lose a lot of capacity at those temperatures and may not be able to turn over the engine in a car with a starter motor. The Prius, on the other hand, only uses its lead acid battery to briefly supply a much smaller amount of current to turn on the computers. Once those are up it can tap the NiMH battery, which works better at low temperatures than the lead acid, to spin the ICE. In the video one guy also mentioned that when they have an injured animal they just tie the legs together, put the rear seats down, and throw it in the back. (Doesn't mention what they do with it afterward. Maybe it goes to the Vet., maybe it becomes dinner.)
Agreed, this is a government regulatory barrier not a crisis of one country waste dumping on another country. Back when I was working with battery rebuilders to buy rebuildable cores in California in 2019 I learned that California originally classified NiMH as hazardous waste and then as time went buy they de-classified it and deemed it no longer hazardous. Problem is the wrecking yards never found out and none of them would agree to a truck coming by periodically to pick up their cores. Eventually I realized that major corporate metal scrappers already had their pickup infrastructure established and rebuilders were already squeezed out of that market and the people who worked at the wrecking yards had no clue about who was picking up their battery packs.
