Dr. Veronika Wright

The common flow is collect, package conservatively, transport, and only then evaluate at the recycler — but state of charge, state of health, repair potential and reuse potential all shape how a pack should be packaged, transported and valued. Finding out what a battery actually is before it travels changes the safety questions, the logistics and the economics.

At Automechanika Frankfurt, Wright described licensed collection and storage infrastructure in Greece where only a fraction actively handles EV batteries, because high voltage, fire risk, SOC, specialised ADR packaging and limited local pretreatment are practical barriers.

• At ICBR in Berlin, Wright cited Hydrovolt's work in Norway with more than 20,000 batteries across more than 400 battery types as a preview of what the rest of Europe faces, and asked why the industry waits until the recycler to learn what it has.
• Steven Chung of ReJoule, a panelist at the Frankfurt session, supplied the comparison Wright quotes: nobody has ever collected a thousand ten-year-old engines and built a power plant from them, which is what is now happening with EV packs.

In the Frankfurt post this is framed as an aftermarket opportunity; by ICBR it becomes a direct proposal to move diagnostics ahead of transport.

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Every company works on one piece, but how a pack is shredded decides what the separation step can recover, and how a pack is designed decides how long dismantling takes.

Wright quotes Witold Statkiewicz at ICBR: "The next challenge is not another isolated technology, but coordinated decisions across the entire value chain."

• The post points to selectively extracting electrodes from modules before shredding so components that do not need to be there stay out of the black mass, and to Nordic Sales Force upgrading difficult, variable black mass into simpler intermediates for downstream refiners.
• In a separate post Wright calls battery recycling the Wild West — not romantically, but in the sense that no single accepted route from a used pack to recovered material has settled yet — and says this is why Electrification Academy was built: to show how the pieces fit together, not to make someone better at one step.

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The gap Wright keeps returning to is the distance between a supplier's presentation and the technical answer an engineer actually needs.

At The Battery Show, a battery engineer walked the exhibition floor with a defect-detection problem in cell production, wanting to know which technology could solve it, under what conditions and with what limits, and explicitly not wanting a sales pitch.

• Wright also heard that teams setting up cell production in the US and Canada can be as small as six or ten people responsible for an industrial line, and that transferring equipment is not the same as transferring the ability to run a process: people with hands-on mixing, coating and drying experience are hard to find.
• The sentiment Wright summarises is not "show me the most innovative technology" but "show me that this works, where it has run, who has experience with it, and who will help us when something goes wrong."

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Orientation for newcomers should come before job-specific training, not replace it.

Wright recounts a fire captain — a mechanical engineer who worked on EV battery structures and responds when packs fail — asking a battery site team what their plan was for a failure and getting the answer "We didn't expect to have a fire."

• The captain's advice is five words: "Plan on having the fire."
• What the captain sees includes large quantities of batteries stored on racks, sometimes buildings with no suppression system at all, and employees pulling trays of batteries out when something catches fire.
• Wright built Battery Ready, a free orientation for people new to batteries, with Elizabeth Gibbons Barber of Empower to Comply and Vickie Lewis of VMX International; it was first shown to a small group on November 5.

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Keeping material in the country does not build refining capacity, does not shorten the time needed to qualify recycled material for use in new cells, and does not answer who buys the refinery's output.

Wright's recap of the ReCell meeting at Argonne National Laboratory describes the rule, in force since August 27, requiring US sellers to allocate 100 percent of monthly black mass sales to US buyers unless the Bureau of Industry and Security grants an exception. The panel, moderated by Tyler Helps with recyclers, a refiner and an OEM, produced these takeaways: one recycler applied the day after the rule was announced and was approved two weeks later; businesses on the panel had seen little change in practice so far; and the unresolved question is who in North America will buy recovered materials and turn them into inputs for new batteries.

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The practical consequence is that scale-up means transferring a proven process from the laboratory to production without losing control of it.

Wright promotes LiB@Lab, Basics of Mixing, a free one-day seminar at Electrification Academy partner Eirich Battery Experts' tech center in Hardheim on November 25, 2026.

• The programme covers mixing fundamentals for lithium-ion batteries in both slurry-based and dry battery electrode routes, how mixer technology and process parameters drive quality and reproducibility, hands-on sessions with lab mixers, scale-up gaps from lab to production, and a company tour.
• The seminar is in English and limited to 20 seats.

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A newcomer should start here to understand the systems view that runs through the rest of Wright's work.

Wright reports from ICBR in Berlin and quotes Witold Statkiewicz: "The next challenge is not another isolated technology, but coordinated decisions across the entire value chain."

• Wright says the technology already exists and the harder work is connecting it into a system.
• Examples include selectively extracting electrodes from modules before shredding so unnecessary components stay out of black mass; Nordic Sales Force upgrading difficult, variable black mass into simpler intermediates for refiners; Greek licensed collection and storage infrastructure where only a fraction actively handles EV batteries; and Hydrovolt in Norway handling more than 20,000 batteries across more than 400 battery types.
• Wright argues diagnostics should move closer to the collection point, because state of health, state of charge, repair potential and reuse decisions affect how a battery is packaged, transported and valued.

For brands planning a campaign

For a battery recycling or EV aftermarket brief, Wright can propose a talk or article on moving diagnostics closer to collection points and coordinating decisions across collection, logistics, reuse and recycling. The post supplies concrete examples and a named industry quote.

It is a good starting point for seeing the commercial questions that follow an EV battery out of the vehicle.

At Wright's first Automechanika Frankfurt, the session focused on hidden business opportunities in the EV battery aftermarket.

• Wright uses a quote from Steven Chung comparing a thousand ten-year-old engines used as a power plant with what is happening to EV battery packs now.
• The post lays out the value chain after a pack leaves the vehicle: diagnostics and state of health, repair and remanufacturing, discharge and dismantling, storage and transportation, second-life applications, and eventually recycling.
• Wright points to APRA Europe's focus on remanufacturing, a GEDORE Group solution for dismantling electric motors, and an audience example from China where a cold-room process around minus 40 degrees Celsius helps break adhesive bonds before failed cells are identified and replaced.
• Panelists included Steven Chung from ReJoule and Patrick Reiter from ANDRITZ.

For brands planning a campaign

For an EV aftermarket company, Wright can frame a panel or article on business opportunities once a pack leaves the vehicle. The lifecycle list and the cold-room repair example give the piece concrete, inspectable detail.

It explains the systems view that connects battery manufacturing, reuse, repair and recycling, and it gives a newcomer the context for the other examples.

Wright argues that battery recycling is still the Wild West, not in a romantic way but in a nobody-has-settled-on-a-process way.

• There is no single accepted route from a used pack to recovered material: shredding or dry shredding, what counts as good black mass, and where the value actually sits are all still being argued out company by company.
• Every company works on one piece of the chain, but every choice lands on somebody else.
• How a battery is shredded decides what the separation step can recover.
• How a pack is designed decides how long dismantling takes.
• Wright says this is why Electrification Academy was built: to bring the pieces together and show how battery ecosystems fit together, not to make someone better at only one step.

For brands planning a campaign

For an education platform, industry body or workflow product, Wright can explain why a value-chain perspective matters and where single-step optimisation breaks down. The post works well as source material for a webinar or article on battery ecosystem decisions.

It answers what a newcomer should know about battery risk before working with packs.

Wright recounts talking with a fire captain who is also a mechanical engineer, worked on battery structures for electric vehicles, and responds when a pack fails.

• At battery sites, the captain sees batteries stored in large quantities on racks, sometimes in buildings with no suppression system, and employees rushing in to pull trays of batteries out when something catches fire.
• When the captain asked one team what their plan was for a failure, the answer was: "We didn't expect to have a fire."
• The captain's advice is five words: "Plan on having the fire."
• Wright built Battery Ready with Elizabeth Gibbons Barber and Vickie Lewis: a free battery safety orientation for people who are new to batteries, shown to a small group for the first time on Thursday, November 5.
• The orientation does not replace job-specific training but comes before it.

For brands planning a campaign

For a safety, compliance or workforce audience, Wright can speak to first-day battery safety, storage arrangements and emergency planning. The Battery Ready orientation is a ready-made example of practical safety education.

It is a useful starting point for readers who want to see how policy affects black mass, refining and battery material markets.

Wright explains that since August 27, US sellers must allocate 100 percent of their monthly black mass sales to US buyers unless the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security grants an exception.

• Wright reports from a panel moderated by Tyler Helps at the ReCell meeting at Argonne National Laboratory, with recyclers, a refiner and an OEM sharing what they are seeing.
• Key takeaways: exceptions can come quickly, with one recycler applying the day after the rule was announced and receiving approval two weeks later; for the businesses represented on the panel, little had changed in practice so far; the rule is a stick and does not build refining capacity or shorten the time needed to qualify recycled materials for use in new cells; and the gap continues beyond refining, because North America still needs buyers for recovered materials and users that turn them into inputs for new batteries.

For brands planning a campaign

For a critical minerals, recycling policy or battery materials brief, Wright can moderate or write about the black mass market constraints. The BIS rule timeline, exception experience and refining gap give the piece specific grounding.

It helps a newcomer see the range of problems Wright follows across manufacturing and recycling.

Asked how The Battery Show went, Wright says the answer depends on where in the battery value chain someone is sitting.

• In cell manufacturing, reliability kept coming up: where equipment has run, who knows how to operate it, and who will support it when something goes wrong.
• Some companies work with Chinese integration partners and train overseas, but transferring equipment is different from transferring the ability to run a process.
• Wright heard examples of six or ten people responsible for setting up industrial manufacturing lines, and finding people with hands-on experience in mixing, coating and drying is difficult.
• In module and pack manufacturing, companies need modules and packs but volumes do not justify a full production line, pointing toward manufacturing as a service, with testing and certification support.
• Energy storage, defence and aviation also featured as demand beyond automotive.
• In recycling, practical questions start with manufacturing scrap, rejected cells and abuse-tested cells: who can take the material, what requirements apply, what it costs, and who helps when volumes are small.
• Wright also notes speaking German for half the day at a North American event and meeting companies working on related problems who did not know each other.

For brands planning a campaign

For a manufacturing, equipment or industry event brief, Wright can deliver a talk or article on the connection gaps between cell production, module and pack manufacturing, and recycling. The examples give the piece operational texture.

It connects directly to the problem Electrification Academy is positioned to solve.

Wright recounts a battery engineer at The Battery Show who was walking the exhibition floor with a specific problem detecting defects in cell production.

• The engineer wanted to understand which technology could solve it, under which conditions, and with what limitations.
• What the engineer did not want was another sales pitch.
• Wright reflects that an exhibition floor full of expertise can still make it hard for someone with a specific engineering problem to get past marketing into a useful technical conversation.
• Other conversations raised two connected challenges for scaling cell production in the US and Canada: finding people who have actually mixed slurries, coated electrodes and worked through production problems, and choosing equipment and partners when pressure to deliver is enormous.
• The sentiment Wright heard was not "show me the most innovative technology" but closer to: show me that this works, where it has run, who has experience with it, and who will help when something goes wrong.
• Wright attended the Siemens/NAATBatt International Reception after an invitation from Vivek Furtado.

For brands planning a campaign

For a B2B technical audience, Wright can discuss trusted technical conversations and how buyers evaluate equipment and partners. The defect-detection example gives a concrete entry point for a content series or event session.

It shows the subject depth behind Electrification Academy and gives a newcomer a specific process chain to follow.

Wright explains that mixing is one of the most technically demanding steps in battery cell manufacturing.

• The chain runs: slurry sets coating uniformity, coating uniformity sets electrode consistency, and electrode consistency sets cell performance, cycle life and the width of the production spread.
• Wright's summary is that everything downstream is decided in the mixer.
• The post announces a free one-day seminar, LiB@Lab, Basics of Mixing, at the Electrification Academy partner Eirich Battery Experts tech center in Hardheim on November 25, 2026.
• The programme covers mixing fundamentals for lithium-ion batteries, both slurry based and dry battery electrode; how mixer technology and process parameters drive quality and reproducibility; hands-on sessions with lab mixers; scale-up from lab to production and where the gaps appear; and a company tour including the Mixeum.
• The seminar is free, in English, and limited to 20 seats.

For brands planning a campaign

For an electrode manufacturing, equipment or materials partner, Wright can host or promote an applied seminar on mixing and scale-up. The slurry-to-electrode chain and the lab-to-production gap provide a practical article angle.

The posts describe a common flow — collect, package conservatively, transport, then assess at the recycler — and ask why those decisions wait when state of health, state of charge, repair and reuse potential affect how a battery should travel. Examples include Hydrovolt's work in Norway with more than 20,000 batteries across more than 400 battery types, and licensed collection infrastructure in Greece that only partly handles EV batteries.

For brands planning a campaign

A useful angle for a battery recycling or EV aftermarket brand is a talk or article on early diagnostics: what data must be captured at collection, which partners need it, and how it changes transport, repair and recycling economics. Wright can supply industry examples and panel framing, but the brand should add its own operational data.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

One ICBR takeaway notes that how a battery is shredded affects what separation can recover, and how a pack is designed affects dismantling time. In Wright's account, every company works on one piece, but every choice lands on somebody else; Electrification Academy was built to show how those pieces fit together.

For brands planning a campaign

Brands selling multiple products or services can use this systems view to avoid narrow product pitches. A campaign could convene recyclers, logistics providers, OEMs and refiners around one workflow, or publish an explainer that traces how one design or process choice moves downstream.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

It names APRA Europe's focus on remanufacturing, a GEDORE tool for dismantling electric motors, an audience example of cold-room adhesive removal at about -40°C, and diagnostics work from MAHLE.

For brands planning a campaign

For an aftermarket, repair or remanufacturing brand, Wright can frame a talk around where a specific capability sits in that chain and what economics or safety questions buyers face. The post is a high-level map, so the brand would need its own product evidence and customer examples.

Examples: Source 1

A Greek example describes licensed collection and storage infrastructure that only partly handles EV batteries. The Battery Show observations add manufacturing scrap, rejected cells and abuse-test cells as early recycling questions, including who can take the material, what requirements apply, what it costs and who helps when volumes are small.

Based on conference recaps; no independent regulatory or cost verification is in the reviewed packet.

For brands planning a campaign

Logistics, compliance, waste-management and recycling businesses can use this material to build a practical webinar or guide on moving batteries safely and economically. The posts identify the questions but do not contain a full regulatory or cost analysis; a brand would need to supply current rules, pricing and service details.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

The post describes batteries stored in large quantities on racks, buildings without suppression systems, and employees pulling trays out during a fire. Wright built a free Battery Ready orientation with Elizabeth Gibbons Barber of Empower to Comply and Vickie Lewis of VMX International, aimed at people new to batteries and explicitly positioned before job-specific training.

One post and a program announcement; no independent safety-outcome data is included.

For brands planning a campaign

Safety, EHS and workforce-training brands can evaluate Wright for a campaign about first-day battery awareness at sites that handle or store batteries. A collaboration should keep the boundary clear: orientation is not a replacement for required training, and the packet contains the program announcement, not measured safety outcomes.

Examples: Source 1

Wright notes that small teams of six or ten people may be responsible for industrial lines, and that module and pack demand sometimes does not justify a dedicated line, pointing to manufacturing-as-a-service. A separate post explains that slurry mixing sets coating uniformity, electrode consistency, cell performance and cycle life, and promotes an Electrification Academy partner seminar with Eirich Battery Experts on mixing fundamentals, scale-up and lab-to-production gaps.

For brands planning a campaign

Equipment, materials and manufacturing-service brands can use Wright for technical education aimed at engineers who want a direct answer rather than a sales pitch. The Eirich seminar is a partner event, so a campaign should separate educational value from sponsorship and verify available dates, seats and content.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2 · Source 3

Takeaways from a panel with recyclers, a refiner and an OEM include: exceptions can move quickly, some businesses saw little change in practice, the rule is a stick that does not build refining capacity or shorten qualification times, and the downstream question remains who in North America will buy recovered materials and turn them into new battery inputs.

Single panel recap; no independent regulatory confirmation is in the reviewed packet.

For brands planning a campaign

Recycling, refining and critical-minerals brands can use Wright to turn policy shifts into a plain-language briefing for customers and investors. The packet contains one conference recap, so a campaign would need current legal and market verification before publishing.

Examples: Source 1

The formats include conference recaps and panel observations (Automechanika, ICBR, The Battery Show, ReCell), a safety-program launch, and Electrification Academy promotions for a recycling workflow and a mixing seminar. Across the corpus, the emphasis shifts from reporting individual event takeaways toward building recurring education and orientation offers.

Pattern observed across eight retained posts: quote, event observation, implication, call to action or program link.

For brands planning a campaign

Brands should expect an event-led, plain-spoken approach rather than a formal lecture.

• A campaign can supply the event, customer problem or technical question; Wright can turn it into a narrative that connects one conversation to a value-chain lesson.
• The corpus shows the formats but not audience metrics or conversion results.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2 · Source 3 · Source 4 · Source 5 · Source 6

She links its recycling workflow and promotes its partner seminars in her posts.

Original disclosure

Thats why I built Electrification Academy.

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Original disclosure

Our Electrification Academy partner Eirich Battery Experts is opening its tech center in Hardheim for a free one day seminar on November 25

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The post does not state a commercial contract.

Original disclosure

That first day is why we built Battery Ready, together with Elizabeth Gibbons Barber, CDGP from Empower to Comply and Vickie Lewis from VMX International.

View example

The post does not state a commercial contract.

Original disclosure

That first day is why we built Battery Ready, together with Elizabeth Gibbons Barber, CDGP from Empower to Comply and Vickie Lewis from VMX International.

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She reports on the event rather than advertising it.

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The post also promotes ICBR 2027 in Basel.

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She reports on conversations rather than endorsing the event.

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Everidge's ground is data center power architecture and factory-packaged equipment; Wright's is the battery value chain from manufacturing through recycling, with more of her material coming from conferences and training programs.

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Smith argues about utility-scale solar and storage development and grid economics; Wright stays closer to battery technology, recycling logistics and workforce questions.

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Beverley focuses on workshop recruitment and technician skills; Wright covers the battery value chain and electrification. Their overlap is the EV aftermarket, where both point to the shortage of qualified technicians.

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Everidge writes from the design side of data center builds: one post walks through a customer's PDC layout that included a dedicated battery room, then describes replacing that arrangement with a factory-packaged system that integrates charger, batteries, DC distribution, monitoring, and enclosure and moves the whole DC power system outside — removing the battery room, cutting space and CapEx, and reducing commissioning risk.

• Another promotes a booth at Data Center World Power in Dallas with the same packaged architecture and starting systems, aimed at compressing deployment schedules.
• A brand whose audience is data center developers, EPCs, or facility engineers, and whose question is how to site and package backup power rather than what to do with a retired pack, gets a more directly useful speaker or author here than from Wright.

You give up the recycling and aftermarket thesis entirely.

• Everidge's reviewed posts cover backup power architecture, installation variables, and project savings; they do not discuss state of health, diagnostics before collection, repair, remanufacturing, black mass, or material routing.
• For a brief about moving diagnostics closer to collection points, Everidge would need a different brief, a different audience, and a co-speaker who handles the end-of-life side.
• Wright already argues the diagnostics-and-value-chain position in public, with named examples.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

Smith's posts describe breaking ground on the Steel River Energy Center with Google as offtaker, built with domestic steel, panels, batteries, and trackers, plus a community investment fund; and a Bloomberg Zero podcast conversation arguing that solar and storage keep winning on affordability and speed to market, that roughly 80% of new US generation over 18 months came from them, and that solar could add about 40 GW a year for a decade. A brand selling generation-scale storage, inverters, trackers, or project finance, or a conference session about deployment economics and policy, fits Smith's material more closely than Wright's.

The evidence sits on the generation and development side.

• Smith discusses capacity added, cost per technology, tax credits, manufacturing jobs, and offtake partners; nothing in the reviewed posts addresses battery diagnostics, second-life assessment, collection logistics, or recycling economics.
• For a recycling or EV aftermarket brief, choosing Smith means bringing in a second technical voice to cover the battery condition and material questions the audience came for.
• Wright supplies that content directly.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

Beverley writes about what recruiters and workshops actually need to probe — how a candidate approaches a misfire or loss of power, whether they understand DPF, EGR, and regeneration rather than just clearing a fault code, and whether an MOT tester can apply inspection standards rather than only hold the qualification.

• A second post lays out the shortage in numbers: around 17,000 UK motor trade vacancies, an estimated shortfall of more than 44,000 EV-qualified technicians by 2035, and the costs of unfilled ramps such as longer waits, overtime, and lost workshop revenue.
• A brand whose session or article is about aftermarket workforce planning, EV technician skills, or recruitment would get more from Beverley than from Wright.

You trade the technical value chain for the labour market.

• Beverley's reviewed material does not cover battery condition, diagnostics at the collection point, repair versus dismantling, second-life use, or material routing.
• A brief about coordinating the battery value chain would still need Wright or another technical expert; Beverley would be the supporting voice on staffing rather than the expert on the campaign's central question.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2