Circular economy for electric vehicle battery waste in the European context:A patent landscape analysis of end-of-life solutions

The circular economy (CE) promotes a life-cycle approach of slow-loop strategies such as reuse, repair, remanufacture, or refurbish end-of-life batteries to slow product life cycles, and closed-loop strategies such as recycling and use of secondary (non-virgin) raw materials in battery production. Europe has been striving towards circular economy since 2015 with the issuance of European Commission’s Circular Economy Action Plan. While adoption of EVs is a positive trend towards climate change mitigation efforts, the concomitant growth in demand for EV batteries has raised environmental, economic, and social concerns from manufacturing and disposal of batteries. The present study is an analysis of the patent landscape of end-of-life (EOL) solutions for waste EV batteries in the European context