where one person wrote a relentlessly inaccurate answer saying EV batteries couldn’t be recycled, and supported it with numerous citations that, when you read them, talked about the difficulty of recycling consumer alkaline batteries, not EV lithium batteries.I’ve seen it in anti-Tesla hit pieces.

Fact is, EV lithium ion batteries are highly recyclable, and Tesla has even created a huge recycling program. The metals in a lithium ion battery pack are incredibly valuable.

Car battery packs aren’t expensive because Elon Musk is sitting in his office stroking a white cat and saying “ho ho ho, let’s soak the people on battery packs!” They’re expensive because the materials inside them cost a lot of money. Even after the battery pack is expended, the materials inside them are still worth a lot of money. It’s a whole lot easier to extract lithium and cobalt from this:

Than from this:

Yes, the car batteries can be recycled. No, the batteries aren’t piling up. The photos you sometimes see with articles about how terrible EV battery recycling is, photos like this:

are dishonest. These are household alkaline batteries, not car lithium batteries!

If you read any article that tells you car batteries can’t be recycled, and it includes a photo like this, the article’s author is lying to you.