For the last decade, the global conversation around electric vehicles (EVs) has focused almost entirely on adoption. Targets, incentives, charging stations and sales figures have dominated headlines. The EV transition is happening daily, at street level, across the Asia-Pacific region and beyond. Yet a far less glamorous question is now becoming just as important as how many EVs we sell: what happens when their batteries are no longer good enough for the road?
Katrin Luger. Photo credits: Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific Office.
As millions of batteries enter circulation, a silent question looms. What happens when the power runs out? In Mae Hong Son, a mountainous province in northern Thailand long suffering from weak grid connections and frequent blackouts, that question has already found a partial answer, a pilot project that repurposes retired electric vehicle batteries to store solar energy. No new dams. No coal plants. Just the second life of technology once considered finished. It is not a one-off experiment, but a preview of a system many governments across Asia and the Pacific are trying to build.
For years, critics warned of an impending battery waste crisis: dead cells, toxic leaks and landfills filled with yesterday’s green solution. Traditionally, batteries begin their lives on earth. Lithium from Australia, cobalt from the Democratic Republic of Congo, nickel from Indonesia. Mining is expensive, carbon-intensive, geopolitically fragile and geologically limited. Yet a ton of used EV batteries often contain more recoverable lithium and cobalt than a ton of freshly mined ore. When we discard batteries, we are not throwing away waste; we are burying value. For countries with limited natural resources, recycling is no longer just environmental policy. It is an industrial strategy.
Sashi Kant Shah. Photo credits: Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific Office.
Lithium-ion batteries carry a real fire risk during transport and storage. Damage, overheating or exposure to saltwater can trigger thermal runaway, a chain reaction that is extremely difficult to stop. Unlike conventional fires, lithium battery fires can reignite hours or even days later.
The maritime industry has learned this the hard way. In 2022, the cargo ship Felicity Ace caught fire in the Atlantic Ocean while carrying nearly 4,000 vehicles, including EVs and hybrids. The blaze burned for almost two weeks before the vessel eventually sank. Since then, multiple roll-on roll-off vessels in Asia and Europe have reported EV-related fires, forcing crews to abandon ships.
One of the biggest headaches in recycling is simply getting the old batteries back. Collecting heavy, flammable, hazardous batteries from thousands of scrap yards and dealerships is a logistical nightmare that accounts for nearly half the cost of recycling. Transporting damaged or degraded batteries requires specialized containers, fire suppression systems, trained handlers and clear regulations. In many developing markets, this infrastructure simply does not exist. The result is a dangerous grey zone where batteries are stockpiled improperly or moved through informal channels.
In many markets, the cost of trucking the battery to the recycler is higher than the value of the metals inside it. This is where Asia’s unique battery swapping approach offers an attractive solution. Unlike the West, where EVs are mostly plugged into private garages, dense Asian cities are embracing a shared model. The automaker VinFast in Vietnam is currently deploying a massive network, targeting 150,000 battery swapping cabinet ports across the country. NIO, a premium EV maker in China, has completed over 90 million battery swaps as of late 2025.
Recent developments have highlighted significant structural hurdles in the Asia-Pacific region that policymakers must address. Infrastructure is expensive and not every bet pays off. Thailand’s state-owned energy giant PTT announced it would shut down its Swap & Go battery subsidiary by 2026. Despite the hype, the unit struggled to find a sustainable business model in a market where cheap gasoline motorbikes still dominate. The industry is currently locked in a debate over interoperability whether the government should force all manufacturers to use the same battery shape. While standardization sounds good on paper, major manufacturers argue it hinders innovation, leaving the sector in a waiting game.
Much of Asia runs on LFP (Lithium Iron Phosphate) batteries because they are affordable and safe. However, unlike the batteries in high-end Western cars, LFP batteries contain no expensive cobalt or nickel. This makes it economically difficult to recycle for profit. Without government incentives, recyclers might ignore these cheap batteries, risking a new waste problem. China has built one of the world’s most advanced EV battery recycling systems, driven by strict Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology Whitelist System ensures only approved recyclers such as GEM and Brunp can legally process end-of-life batteries, pushing out informal actors. A national Traceability Platform, operated by China Automotive Technology and Research Center assigns every battery a unique 24-digit code to track its full lifecycle and prevent illegal disposal. Updated MOT transport regulations further standardize safe movement of lithium batteries. Together, these policies create a tightly governed, technology driven circular system.
Governments are no longer leaving this to chance. The European Union has introduced the Battery Passport, a digital twin for every industrial battery. By 2027, scanning a QR code on a battery will reveal its chemistry, origin, health status and carbon footprint. This transparency solves a major market failure of trust. If a recycler knows exactly what is inside a battery before they open it, and a second-life buyer knows exactly how healthy the cells are, the market becomes efficient and safe.
The logic is simple: If we can extend a battery’s useful life by another 10 to 15 years as grid storage, we dramatically lower its carbon footprint and delay the need for recycling. Even major US players are making this move; General Motors recently partnered with Redwood Materials to use retired EV batteries to back up data centers, proving that old car parts can power the AI revolution.
The Asia-Pacific region, with its dense cities and massive motorbike fleets, is uniquely positioned to lead to this charge. However, success is not guaranteed. It requires policymakers to move beyond simple EV purchase subsidies and start funding the back end of the ecosystem providing incentives for LFP recycling, clarifying swapping standards without killing innovation, and creating cross-border protocols for handling battery waste. By combining swapping networks (which solve collection) with advanced recycling (which solves supply), we can build a future where the waste of the electric revolution becomes its most vital asset. The mine of the future won’t be a hole in the ground; it will be the resource traffic flowing through our cities.
The authors are Katrin Luger, Chief of the Transport Research and Policy Section, and Sashi Kant Shah, Intern, Transport Division, the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of The Astana Times.
