Matching End-of-Life Household Vehicle Generation and Recycling Capacity in a City-Scale Setting: A Spatio-Temporal Analysis for 2022-2050

Abstract

End-of-life vehicles (ELVs) present both opportunities and challenges for resource conservation and environmental protection. However, China's uncontrolled and disorderly expansion of the recycling industry has resulted in a mismatch between recycling capacity and demand (including overcapacity and undercapacity), with negative impacts such as resource waste and environmental pollution. Analyzing spatio-temporal patterns and evaluating the recycling capacity matching is essential to promote sustainable development. However, previous studies focused narrowly on national/provincial-scale patterns of ELVs or ignored the issue of recovery capacity matching (especially overcapacity), which does not meet the needs of policy development at the city scale and the reality of recycling management in China. Therefore, this study simulated the end-of-life internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs) and new energy vehicles (NEVs) in Chinese cities from 2021 to 2050, revealing the city-scale spatio-temporal patterns and urban differences regarding perspectives of development levels and geographical locations. More importantly, this study quantitatively evaluates the matching relationship between existing recycling systems and projected future demand at city-scale. Warnings and suggestions are provided for cities with severe matching problems. The results indicate that the number of ELVs in China will continue to increase, peaking at 3.5-3.7 million, approximately seven times higher than in 2020, mainly driven by third to fifth-tier cities. ELVs will gradually be concentrated in central and southwestern cities, accounting for 47% of NEVs and 50% of ICEVs. Most cities have excess dismantling capacity, while first-tier cities face incoordination problems in battery collection. Spatial coordination across cities or provinces is prioritized for dismantling enterprises over blind deregistration or establishment. Effective solutions to the battery collection incoordination should require government intervention to establish a recycling-sharing mechanism and secondary markets. These measures can maximize the environmental and economic benefits of recycling and contribute to achieving the United Nations' 2030 SDGs.

Keywords: End-of-life vehicles, Spatial-temporal patterns, Over capacity, Recycling capacity optimization, City scale