Florian Karlstedt, Project Manager at Rhenus Automotive and Managing Director of BLC – The Battery Lifecycle Company, was already a guest on the podcast in 2022, when he shed light on the tasks to be mastered in automotive logistics for the production of electric cars. In the new episode, he is joined by his colleague Lukas Brandl, also Managing Director of BLC. Lukas Brandl delves deep into the conditions of EV battery recycling and the difficulties that arise, for example, from the abundance of battery manufacturers.
In order to check the status of the electric batteries and repair them if necessary, it is necessary to unscrew the casing, whereby the up to 200 screws can be located in different places depending on the model. The use of the batteries also leads to corrosion, ageing or other obstacles to disassembly.
"Of course, we all dream of a robot factory where the time-consuming unscrewing is done by robot arms. That won't be the case in the next three to five years, but we are already taking a close look at the disassembly process and examining it for possible automation," explains Lukas Brandl.
The logistics of collecting the batteries from the vehicle repair shops and transporting them to the maintenance and recycling sites also harbours a number of problems that need to be solved. "Defective or crashed vehicles will not recur at regular intervals. There will be peak phases, the quantities will fluctuate – all of this requires an intelligent concept, which we are also currently working on in order to refine it further," adds Florian Karlstedt.
Find out how BLC is mastering these challenges and how the two guests see the future of the automotive industry in the latest episode of Logistics People Talk. Listen in!
