Abstract:

Li-Ion packs are high added-value products with great amounts of critical materials (e.g. Lithium and Cobalt), therefore an effective circular economy strategy is mandatory for these components. Nevertheless, commercial electric vehicles' batteries are not designed to be easily, safely and cost-effectively disassembled, tested and remanufactured or recycled. To overcome this industrial limitation, this paper presents a circular-economy-oriented redesign study for e-mobility batteries. The House of Quality (HoQ) is a well-known design tool used to link product’s engineering specifications to customer expectations. Through a structured design criteria evaluation methodology (House of Quality), product's features impacting the most on circular economy design requirements have been assessed. This study represents a valuable tool for e-mobility stakeholders which can be exploited both for the design or redesign of new LIB EV batteries and for the evaluation of CE readiness of already existing products.