Malaysia needs to have a similar facility setup at the soonest and Honda, BMW or Mercedes-Benz in Malaysia could and should take the lead in this project.
About a month ago a local Thai newspaper reported that Toyota Motor Thailand has opened a battery life cycle management plant in the city of Chachoengsao. This is the first factory outside of Japan for the Toyota brand to recycle batteries of hybrid cars sold in Thailand.
This new state of the art facility is a partnership with Toyota subsidiaries and affiliates, comprising of Toyota Daihatsu Engineering & Manufacturing (TDEM), Toyota Motor Asia-Pacific, Toyota Tsusho Thailand, Denso Thailand and also Siam Waste Management.
This facility will be run by TTK Logistics Thailand, a subsidiary of Toyota Tsusho and it is located adjacent to the Toyota’s passenger car plant and battery assembly plant in Chachoengsao.
Hybrid cars are the lowest level of technology for electric vehicles, in which the batteries need to be circulated and managed in a 3R scheme (rebuild, reuse and recycle).
This plant will have capacity to rapidly diagnose 10,000 units a year and recycle 20,000 units a year. Toyota in Thailand have sold almost 78,000 hybrid cars until August this year.
For BEV (battery powered vehicle) batteries, the factory is not yet able to take and recycle the batteries used by full electric vehicles. Thailand have less than 1,500 full electric cars registered and running in the country which is about 0.004% of total registered vehicle in Thailand.
This Toyota owned hybrid battery plant will also look into rebuilding and recycling hybrid batteries from other car brands, probably Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Volvo and Honda which have a high number of hybrids and plug-in hybrids running in Thailand.
Recycled hybrid batteries will be packaged into two areas. First, nickel metal hydride and lithium-ion batteries will be sent for recycling then shipped back to Japan to produce new hybrid batteries.
Second, moderate-efficiency modules still capable of storing electric charge will be reused for energy storage to reserve and to supply energy for buildings, factories and hybrid/EV charging stations.
