Over 80% Reduction in Time and Cost Compared to Existing Inspections
Businesses with experts can conduct full inspections themselves

With the global expansion of electric vehicle adoption expected to lead to a continuous generation of waste batteries, it has been suggested that a new '100% inspection system' should be introduced to establish a safety inspection system aimed at enhancing the utilization of waste batteries.

The legislative public hearing on the 'Electrical Appliances and Household Goods Safety Management Act' for the introduction of a safety inspection system for reusable batteries was held to hear opinions from institutions and companies regarding the amendment of the bills proposed by Representative Lee Jang-seop last January.

By 2030, there are 80,000 waste batteries, with a scale of 21 trillion won, and the annual average growth is expected to reach 8.2%.

According to SNE Research, the total sales volume of electric vehicles and hybrid electric vehicles in the first half of 2022 was approximately 4,285,000 units, a 63% increase compared to the same period last year.

The number of waste batteries generated in 2022 is projected to increase exponentially to 9,155 for electric vehicles compared to only 12 in 2017, and hybrid electric vehicles are also expected to more than double to 74,988 compared to 3,657 in 2017.

Waste batteries collected domestically are reused for ESS, etc., or disposed of after recovering key materials such as lithium.

The industry aims to secure global competitiveness, not stopping at the domestic level. It was stated that relevant laws must be amended promptly for this to happen.

Kim Yu-tak, head of the Korea Battery Industry Association, stated, “The cumulative capacity of recyclable electric vehicle batteries worldwide is expected to increase to 1 TWh by 2030,” and argued that we must move quickly to secure the global market.

Park Sun-kyu, a manager at SK ON, stated, “There was business uncertainty due to the absence of a safety inspection system to evaluate reusable batteries.” “Currently, the evaluation period for recycled battery modules alone is three months,” he said, adding, “I hope that with the legislation of the inspection system, the projects that have been conducted as demonstration projects will be commercialized in earnest.”

Jang Hyuk-jo, Head of the Electrical and Telecommunications Product Safety Division at the Korean Agency for Technology and Standards, stated, “As the adoption of electric vehicles expands, the continuous generation of waste batteries is expected, necessitating an inspection system to enhance their utilization.” He added, “To reduce the inspection burden, we will allow businesses equipped with specialized personnel to conduct inspections themselves.”

Representative Yoon Kwan-seok continued by emphasizing the necessity of a full inspection, stating, “Approximately 80% of waste batteries can be recycled or reused,” but added, “However, because the quality of individual waste batteries varies and the risk of accidents is high, all products must be inspected.”

To this end, the plan is to introduce a new 'full inspection system' suitable for used products, rather than the safety certification (sample inspection by model) under current laws.

Compared to existing methods that require massive costs and time, full inspection can reduce costs and time by more than 80%.

Manager Jang stated, “We will conduct guidance and supervision of safety inspection agencies, including verifying the appropriateness of inspection work even after the fact,” adding, “We are insured to compensate for damages caused by defects in waste batteries.”

The scale of liability insurance is 1 billion won for property damage and 150 million won for bodily injury, and the annual insurance premium is estimated at 12 million won.

Inspection methods are also becoming more advanced.

KTL will complete the development of a software inspection technique utilizing driving history information embedded in batteries within this year.

While existing module testing took 40 hours, software testing techniques [test so]This time can be drastically reduced from 80 minutes to 30 minutes per person.

Operation history information includes the number of charge/discharge cycles, remaining capacity, battery voltage, and battery failure history.

Many things were said during the Q&A session as well.

When asked about the fact that business could not be conducted due to a lack of battery supply for a year, Manager Jang replied that the reason was that it had not been long since the full-scale rollout of electric vehicles began.

It was reported that in order to revitalize the supply and demand of waste batteries, a process will be established for private sector purchasing rather than the Ministry of Environment's bidding method.