The rapid growth of the electric vehicle (EV) market is essential to meet global targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, improving urban air quality, and meeting consumer demand. However, the increasing number of EVs presents significant waste management challenges for recyclers at the end of their life. Spent EV batteries, however, offer an opportunity for manufacturers to access strategic and critical materials for key components in EV manufacturing. This paper outlines and evaluates the current range of approaches to EV lithium-ion battery (LIB) recycling and re-use, and highlights areas for future progress. The electric-vehicle revolution is set to change the automotive industry radically. In 2017, sales of electric vehicles exceeded one million cars per year worldwide for the first time. The resulting pack waste would be around 250,000 tonnes and half a million cubic metres of unprocessed pack waste when these vehicles reach the end of their lives. Although re-use and current recycling processes can divert some of these wastes from landfill, the cumulative burden of electric-vehicle waste is substantial given the growth trajectory of the electric-vehicle market. This waste presents a number of serious challenges of scale; in terms of storing batteries before repurposing or final disposal, in the manual testing and dismantling processes required for either, and in the chemical separation processes that recycling entails. The environmental footprint of manufacturing electric vehicles is heavily affected by the extraction of raw materials and production of lithium-ion batteries. The resulting waste streams will inevitably place different demands on end-of-life dismantling and recycling systems. In the waste management hierarchy, re-use is considered preferable to recycling. Because considerable value is embedded in manufactured lithium-ion batteries, it has been suggested that their use should be cascaded through a hierarchy of applications to optimize material use and life-cycle impacts. Markets for energy storage are under development as energy regulators in various locations transition to cleaner energy sources. Energy storage is particularly sought after in areas where weak grids require reinforcement, where high penetration of renewables requires supply to be balanced with demand, where there is an opportunity for trading energy with the grid and in off-grid applications. Battery assessment and disassembly require accurate assessment of both the state of health and the state of charge to categorize whether batteries are best suited for re-use, remanufacture or recycling. For high-throughput triage and gateway testing of batteries at scale, the optimal approach involves in situ techniques for monitoring cells in service to enable advance warning of possible cell replacement, and module or pack reconditioning, rather than complete repurposing at a low level of state of health owing to a few failing cells. Automating battery disassembly could eliminate the risk of harm to human workers, and increased automation would reduce cost, potentially making recycling economically viable. However, automation presents major challenges due to the complexity of vehicle battery disassembly. There is no standardization of design for battery packs, modules or cells within the automotive sector, and it is unlikely that this will happenThe rapid growth of the electric vehicle (EV) market is essential to meet global targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, improving urban air quality, and meeting consumer demand. However, the increasing number of EVs presents significant waste management challenges for recyclers at the end of their life. Spent EV batteries, however, offer an opportunity for manufacturers to access strategic and critical materials for key components in EV manufacturing. This paper outlines and evaluates the current range of approaches to EV lithium-ion battery (LIB) recycling and re-use, and highlights areas for future progress. The electric-vehicle revolution is set to change the automotive industry radically. In 2017, sales of electric vehicles exceeded one million cars per year worldwide for the first time. The resulting pack waste would be around 250,000 tonnes and half a million cubic metres of unprocessed pack waste when these vehicles reach the end of their lives. Although re-use and current recycling processes can divert some of these wastes from landfill, the cumulative burden of electric-vehicle waste is substantial given the growth trajectory of the electric-vehicle market. This waste presents a number of serious challenges of scale; in terms of storing batteries before repurposing or final disposal, in the manual testing and dismantling processes required for either, and in the chemical separation processes that recycling entails. The environmental footprint of manufacturing electric vehicles is heavily affected by the extraction of raw materials and production of lithium-ion batteries. The resulting waste streams will inevitably place different demands on end-of-life dismantling and recycling systems. In the waste management hierarchy, re-use is considered preferable to recycling. Because considerable value is embedded in manufactured lithium-ion batteries, it has been suggested that their use should be cascaded through a hierarchy of applications to optimize material use and life-cycle impacts. Markets for energy storage are under development as energy regulators in various locations transition to cleaner energy sources. Energy storage is particularly sought after in areas where weak grids require reinforcement, where high penetration of renewables requires supply to be balanced with demand, where there is an opportunity for trading energy with the grid and in off-grid applications. Battery assessment and disassembly require accurate assessment of both the state of health and the state of charge to categorize whether batteries are best suited for re-use, remanufacture or recycling. For high-throughput triage and gateway testing of batteries at scale, the optimal approach involves in situ techniques for monitoring cells in service to enable advance warning of possible cell replacement, and module or pack reconditioning, rather than complete repurposing at a low level of state of health owing to a few failing cells. Automating battery disassembly could eliminate the risk of harm to human workers, and increased automation would reduce cost, potentially making recycling economically viable. However, automation presents major challenges due to the complexity of vehicle battery disassembly. There is no standardization of design for battery packs, modules or cells within the automotive sector, and it is unlikely that this will happen