How recycled minerals from GM EV batteries are helping power new ones
2026-09-22
BYLINE: By Melissa Flaherty, Director of Sustainable EV Battery Ecosystem
When it comes to EV batteries, most of us start with the same questions: How far can I go on a charge? How long will my battery last?
Those are fair questions. But here’s something that might surprise you: powering an EV is only the opening chapter in a battery’s story. An EV battery can continue delivering value long after its life in a vehicle —and to create circularity, its materials can be recovered, refined and used to make new EV batteries.
In fact, using today’s technology, recycling processes can recover substantial quantities of critical battery materials—up to 95% for nickel, cobalt, and manganese and up to 80% for lithium, depending on process conditions and battery chemistry. Future advances may enable higher recovery percentages.
Put simply, the batteries powering today’s EVs can help power tomorrow’s.
That’s exactly how we’re thinking about it at GM, and it’s why we’re celebrating a major milestone: through a closed-loop recycling pilot, materials recovered from end-of-life GM EV batteries were refined and put back into new batteries to power new EVs.
Closing the loop
For years, the EV industry has been working toward closed-loop battery recycling. Raw materials are among the largest cost drivers in battery cells, so recovering and reusing them can help support lower-cost batteries over time, reduce reliance on newly extracted materials, and strengthen supply chain resilience.
This month, GM and our partners completed a pilot demonstrating a closed-loop recycling pathway: building our first EVs using battery cells made with 100% recycled nickel, cobalt, and manganese which includes material recovered from end-of-life GM EV battery packs.
Here’s how it worked: Over the last several years, GM has worked with partners across recycling, materials processing, and battery cell manufacturing to recycle end-of-life batteries and build a pilot pathway for recovering and reusing critical minerals contained in them.
With our partner Cirba Solutions, 80 end-of-life GM EV batteries were recovered as part of the pilot program, recycled at their company’s facility and converted into “black mass” – a blend of battery materials that’s created by disassembling and separation of end-of-life lithium-ion batteries.
Recovering black mass is only the first step, though: it must ultimately be converted into cathode material, whose critical minerals—such as nickel, cobalt and manganese—help determine a battery’s cost, safety, and performance. And, before any recycled content can go into a new cell, it must also meet the same demanding quality, performance, and safety standards as if they were brand-new.
And that’s exactly what happened: the recovered black mass was turned into more than 12 metric tons of new cathode active material – the most important part of a battery cell – made with 100% recycled nickel, cobalt, and manganese.
This new cathode active material was then validated to the same high quality, safety, and performance standard required for use in an electric vehicle.
Once testing demonstrated the cells made with recycled materials performed as well as the ones made from virgin material, Ultium Cells produced new EV battery cells using this cathode active material with 100% recycled nickel, cobalt, and manganese content.
Our manufacturing teams assembled cells into battery modules and packs at Factory ZERO and Spring Hill. And finally, this month, the first new Cadillac LYRIQ, LYRIQ-V, VISTIQ, ESCALADE IQ and IQL, Chevrolet Silverado EV Trail Boss, and GMC Sierra EV AT4 rolled off the line at Spring Hill Assembly and Factory Zero, powered by GM’s first battery cells containing cathode active material made with these recycled critical minerals, where they are now headed off to customers.
Why this matters
Making this happen took years of engineering, quality, logistics, testing and manufacturing work across GM and with our partners, including Cirba Solutions, Ultium Cells, LG Energy Solution, and others.
In fact, one of the key learnings we gained from this pilot is just how much teamwork and coordination these programs require.
Now, we’ve got more work ahead of us. This pilot program gives us a foundation with data and experience to build on and learn from, but it is just the beginning as more EV batteries reach the end of their useful lives over the next decade and beyond.
Recycling is just one chapter in GM’s battery lifecycle
As important as our closed-loop recycling pilot program is, recycling isn’t the second act for our EV batteries: it’s often the final act within GM’s broader, end-to-end battery lifecycle strategy.
For example, our remanufacturing and refurbishment programs are designed to reuse more than 70% of pack components, helping extend useful life while reducing the need to produce a completely new pack.
And because we engineer lasting value into our EV batteries, we can extend their energy-storage capability beyond a vehicle’s first life—putting it to work in new applications like stationary energy storage before recovering [and recycling] the materials for a new EV cell.
Together with Redwood Materials, we’re deploying roughly 10,000 GM second-life batteries into real-world energy infrastructure. That includes the largest second-life battery microgrid in North America with additional deployments ahead, including at our own manufacturing footprint here in the U.S.
Not every battery will follow the same path. But our strategy for fostering a circular economy speaks to a fundamental truth: batteries are critical assets. We’re building for the whole lifecycle so batteries can deliver value to customers in EVs today, help support the grid tomorrow, and help power the next generation of transportation. This pilot demonstrates a pathway for using recovered battery materials in new cells and supports our larger goal of exploring ways to reduce the carbon footprint of battery materials and costs to consumers.
We’ll be sharing more about this work—along with other innovations in EVs, electrification and circularity—at Climate Week NYC, where GM is a title sponsor of the Nest Campus.
A team member installs battery modules with cells made with recycled battery materials into a new battery pack at Factory ZERO.
By Melissa Flaherty, Director of Sustainable EV Battery Ecosystem
When it comes to EV batteries, most of us start with the same questions: How far can I go on a charge? How long will my battery last?
Those are fair questions. But here’s something that might surprise you: powering an EV is only the opening chapter in a battery’s story. An EV battery can continue delivering value long after its life in a vehicle —and to create circularity, its materials can be recovered, refined and used to make new EV batteries.
In fact, using today’s technology, recycling processes can recover substantial quantities of critical battery materials—up to 95% for nickel, cobalt, and manganese and up to 80% for lithium, depending on process conditions and battery chemistry. Future advances may enable higher recovery percentages.
Put simply, the batteries powering today’s EVs can help power tomorrow’s.
That’s exactly how we’re thinking about it at GM, and it’s why we’re celebrating a major milestone: through a closed-loop recycling pilot, materials recovered from end-of-life GM EV batteries were refined and put back into new batteries to power new EVs.
Closing the loop
For years, the EV industry has been working toward closed-loop battery recycling. Raw materials are among the largest cost drivers in battery cells, so recovering and reusing them can help support lower-cost batteries over time, reduce reliance on newly extracted materials, and strengthen supply chain resilience.
This month, GM and our partners completed a pilot demonstrating a closed-loop recycling pathway: building our first EVs using battery cells made with 100% recycled nickel, cobalt, and manganese which includes material recovered from end-of-life GM EV battery packs.
Here’s how it worked: Over the last several years, GM has worked with partners across recycling, materials processing, and battery cell manufacturing to recycle end-of-life batteries and build a pilot pathway for recovering and reusing critical minerals contained in them.
With our partner Cirba Solutions, 80 end-of-life GM EV batteries were recovered as part of the pilot program, recycled at their company’s facility and converted into “black mass” – a blend of battery materials that’s created by disassembling and separation of end-of-life lithium-ion batteries.
Recovering black mass is only the first step, though: it must ultimately be converted into cathode material, whose critical minerals—such as nickel, cobalt and manganese—help determine a battery’s cost, safety, and performance. And, before any recycled content can go into a new cell, it must also meet the same demanding quality, performance, and safety standards as if they were brand-new.
One of the first GMC Sierra EVs with battery cells made from recycled materials rolls off the line at Factory ZERO.
And that’s exactly what happened: the recovered black mass was turned into more than 12 metric tons of new cathode active material – the most important part of a battery cell – made with 100% recycled nickel, cobalt, and manganese.
This new cathode active material was then validated to the same high quality, safety, and performance standard required for use in an electric vehicle.
Once testing demonstrated the cells made with recycled materials performed as well as the ones made from virgin material, Ultium Cells produced new EV battery cells using this cathode active material with 100% recycled nickel, cobalt, and manganese content.
Our manufacturing teams assembled cells into battery modules and packs at Factory ZERO and Spring Hill. And finally, this month, the first new Cadillac LYRIQ, LYRIQ-V, VISTIQ, ESCALADE IQ and IQL, Chevrolet Silverado EV Trail Boss, and GMC Sierra EV AT4 rolled off the line at Spring Hill Assembly and Factory Zero, powered by GM’s first battery cells containing cathode active material made with these recycled critical minerals, where they are now headed off to customers.
Why this matters
Making this happen took years of engineering, quality, logistics, testing and manufacturing work across GM and with our partners, including Cirba Solutions, Ultium Cells, LG Energy Solution, and others.
In fact, one of the key learnings we gained from this pilot is just how much teamwork and coordination these programs require.
Now, we’ve got more work ahead of us. This pilot program gives us a foundation with data and experience to build on and learn from, but it is just the beginning as more EV batteries reach the end of their useful lives over the next decade and beyond.
Recycling is just one chapter in GM’s battery lifecycle
As important as our closed-loop recycling pilot program is, recycling isn’t the second act for our EV batteries: it’s often the final act within GM’s broader, end-to-end battery lifecycle strategy.
For example, our remanufacturing and refurbishment programs are designed to reuse more than 70% of pack components, helping extend useful life while reducing the need to produce a completely new pack.
And because we engineer lasting value into our EV batteries, we can extend their energy-storage capability beyond a vehicle’s first life—putting it to work in new applications like stationary energy storage before recovering [and recycling] the materials for a new EV cell.
Together with Redwood Materials, we’re deploying roughly 10,000 GM second-life batteries into real-world energy infrastructure. That includes the largest second-life battery microgrid in North America with additional deployments ahead, including at our own manufacturing footprint here in the U.S.
Not every battery will follow the same path. But our strategy for fostering a circular economy speaks to a fundamental truth: batteries are critical assets. We’re building for the whole lifecycle so batteries can deliver value to customers in EVs today, help support the grid tomorrow, and help power the next generation of transportation. This pilot demonstrates a pathway for using recovered battery materials in new cells and supports our larger goal of exploring ways to reduce the carbon footprint of battery materials and costs to consumers.
We’ll be sharing more about this work—along with other innovations in EVs, electrification and circularity—at Climate Week NYC, where GM is a title sponsor of the Nest Campus.
