Old Porsche batteries in, new Porsche battery cells out. On 17 September 2026, Porsche announced a milestone in its high-voltage battery recycling pilot: for the first time, battery cells have been produced using cathode active material made entirely from recycled raw materials.
The wording matters. It is the cathode active material that is 100 per cent recycled, not the whole cell. That material carries the most strategic metals in a lithium-ion battery: lithium, nickel, cobalt and manganese. In this project, all of them were recovered from Porsche’s own high-voltage batteries.
A pilot that started in 2025
The announcement builds on a pilot project on high-voltage battery recycling launched the year before. The idea has three steps. Recover raw materials from end-of-life batteries, process them into new materials, then use those materials in new cells for Porsche test vehicles.
Porsche is working with several partners, including German recycling company cylib. The project has now reached the stage where recycled active materials fully replace the primary raw materials normally used. The resulting cells are currently going through extensive testing under real operating conditions.
Joachim Scharnagl, the Porsche Executive Board member responsible for Procurement, describes it as an important technological milestone, for circular economy goals and for the resilience of raw material supply.
Quality is the real test
Getting cobalt or lithium back out of a used battery is one thing. Producing material good enough for a performance car battery is another, and Porsche says as much. The next step is to confirm that the recycled materials meet its standards for value, quality and performance.
Initial tests point to technical feasibility. More results are expected in the second half of 2026. What the pilot learns will form the basis for a « potential » future use of these materials in series-production cells. That is Porsche’s word. No production date, no volumes and no specific model have been announced.
German Porsche Centres already feed the loop
Part of the system is already running outside the lab. Since May 2026, end-of-life high-voltage batteries collected from Porsche Centres in Germany have been recycled by cylib using a water-based process.
The batteries are first discharged and dismantled, then mechanically shredded. The shredded material is processed into what the industry calls black mass, which contains the valuable raw materials.
Recovered materials are tracked through a dedicated material account. From 2028 they will be available to Porsche and selected partner companies for battery cell production. Porsche frames this as a way to reduce its reliance on global raw material sources, with the longer-term prospect of European-recycled materials going into the high-voltage batteries of its cars.
Dr Lilian Schwich, co-CEO and co-founder of cylib, says the pilot shows the approach works in practice: raw materials from a Porsche battery at the end of its first life can potentially flow back into a new high-performance Porsche battery.
Who is cylib
cylib was founded in Aachen in 2022 by Lilian Schwich, Paul Sabarny and Gideon Schwich, building on research carried out at RWTH Aachen University. It runs research and development at its Aachen headquarters, dismantling and mechanical processing in Wernberg-Köblitz, and is developing a hydrometallurgical processing site in Dormagen, still under construction according to the press release.
What it changes for electric Porsches
Nothing yet for cars in showrooms. This is a pilot, and the cells are running in test vehicles.
It does fit a broader pattern. Porsche has taken more of its battery chain in-house: for the new Cayenne Electric, it uses high-voltage batteries developed and built by Porsche itself, with module production in Horná Streda, Slovakia, which the company presented in March 2026. The Cayenne Electric also got a set of bespoke tyres this summer, covered in Pirelli signs off six tyre fitments for the electric Cayenne.
Second-life use comes before recycling in Porsche’s thinking. In 2024 the company showed an energy storage system at its Leipzig plant built from 4,400 modules taken from used Taycan batteries. Recycling is what happens once a battery can no longer be reused.
For the longer view, French speakers can read our pieces on Porsche and the environment and Porsche’s electrification (both French-language resources).
Source: Porsche Newsroom, press release dated 17 September 2026.
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