Life cycle assessment of long life lithium electrode for electric vehicle batteries -cells for Leaf, Tesla and Volvo bus

This report contains a life cycle assessment of 10Ah lithium battery cells with metallic lithium in the anode. It was performed in the context of the Swedish TriLi - Longlife lithium electrodes for EV and HEV batteries - project. The cells have been analyzed from cradle to grave, i.e., from raw material production over own manufacturing, use in three different vehicles: Nissan Leaf, Tesla model S and a Volvo bus; and end-of-life. The study aims to highlight environmental hotspots with lithium batteries with metallic lithium in the anode in order to improve them as well as to investigate environmental benefits with such lithium batteries in different vehicles. Battery cells with metallic lithium in the anode and LFP and NMC chemistry were compared to the original vehicle batteries. In short, the study points towards the following conclusions:  Both the LFP and NMC lithium metal anode battery cells shows lower climate impact potential, lower abiotic depletion potential and lower toxicity potential than the original NMC and NCA cells with copper anodes. The main reason for the difference is higher energy density which gives lower weight and thus lower electricity consumption. However, the lower carbon footprint of the metal anode cells rests on the assumption that they last as many cycles as the original NMC and NCA, something which has not yet been proven.  For the same reason (higher energy density) the NMC chemistry shows lower environmental impacts per vehicle kilometre than the LFP chemistry for the metal anode battery cells, but here the difference is much smaller and probably within error margins.  Assembly energy is a main driver for climate impact. Sensitivity calculations with Swedish average electricity mix for production of the cells show that production impacts can be reduced by 25% by producing in Sweden, compared to global average production.