Old Porsche Taycan Batteries Have A Second Life And Its Useful

As more and more electric cars are on our roads, battery recycling is becoming a real challenge for the future. For the moment, with electric cars remaining relatively recent, there are still few batteries to recycle. So the sector is getting organized. And if recycling itself, that is to say, the recovery of materials to reuse them, is only in its infancy, with promises depending on the processes that can still reach up to 80 or 90%, some are choosing reuse. Like Porsche, which is showing how the high-voltage batteries of its electric vehicles can be reused and become part of a new virtuous circle.

A Second Life Before Recycling

This is how Porsche has built an impressive energy storage facility at its Leipzig plant, using batteries from pre-series and pre-production Taycans. In total, the system is the size of almost two basketball courts and consists of no fewer than 4,400 battery modules. “We wanted to create electricity storage capacity for the Leipzig plant to make the site even more economical and increase its degree of self-sufficiency,” explains Jonathan Dietrich, who is in charge of the battery storage project. “It therefore made sense to use the batteries from the Taycan pre-series vehicles instead of recycling them.” In total, this energy storage plant based on used batteries, which are no longer saleable but still powerful enough not to have to be recycled, provides 5 megawatts and increases to 10 MW of capacity.

Renewable Energy And Self-Sufficiency

It’s all well and good to have something to store energy in, but you still need some to store. For that, Porsche can count on the electricity produced by the solar panels installed on the roof of the factory, a system with a maximum power of 9.4 MW.

Porsche estimates that the lifespan of its system is more than 10 years. Knowing that each module can be replaced individually if necessary. In addition, this storage plant will soon be connected to the electricity network to redistribute excess electricity. Porsche is particularly involved in the use of these renewable energies for its factories, with this Leipzig factory whose heating is produced from biomass and which only uses electricity from renewable energy sources. Like the one in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen.