Waste Management 104 (2020) 198–206

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Waste Management
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/wasman

Estimation of End-of-Life Hybrid Vehicle number in Japan considering

secondhand vehicle exportation
Shuoyao Wang ⇑, Jeongsoo Yu, Kazuaki Okubo
Tohoku University, Graduate School of International Cultural Studies, Sendai 980-8576, Japan

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Hybrid Vehicle (HV) is becoming more and more popular around the world in recent years. Japan is the
Received 28 August 2019 biggest HV market presently, the sales of HV is actually increasing faster than the government has pre-
Revised 10 January 2020 dicted. Meanwhile, a huge amount of End-of-Life HV will emerge in the future, and since HV consumes
Accepted 15 January 2020
more rare metal (cobalt and nickel, etc.,) and non-ferrous metal (aluminum and copper, etc.,) during the
Available online 22 January 2020
manufacturing process comparing to ordinary vehicles, the proper treatment and sufficient resource
recycling process is indispensable. However, although Japan government installed End-of-Life HV
Keywords:
recycling system, recyclable End-of-Life HV in Japan cannot be grasped due to the massive exportation
End-of-Life Vehicle
Hybrid Vehicle
of secondhand HV to developing countries. Moreover, despite secondhand HV, components from End-
Japan of-Life HV such as Nickel-Metal Hydride batteries and electric motors will also be exported to developing
Estimation countries as used parts. Since resource potential of these components is high and will cause pollution
Secondhand vehicle exportation problem in exportation destination without proper recycling treatment, their flow should also be studied.
This research aims at estimating recyclable End-of-Life HV number using actual vehicle deregistration
rate in Japan while considering secondhand HV exportation trend. Moreover, the flow of previously
mentioned components was also studied. Scenario analysis on the secondhand HV exportation and com-
ponents’ flow was further performed, and the effect of secondhand HV and components’ exportation was
discussed. The result shows that, only 0.11 million waste HV will be recycled in Japan in 2030 under the
basic scenario and will not surpass 1 million in all 3 additional scenarios.
Ó 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction transition of HV sales for passenger vehicles in Japan is shown in

In recent years, along with the increasing need to secure fuel
supply as well as reduce environmental pollution, multiple coun-
tries published their policies to sell more Hybrid Vehicles (HV),
therefore, HV is increasing at a quite fast speed (Yu et al., 2017).
On the other hand, comparing with ordinary vehicles, more metal
resources, namely non-ferrous metal (such as copper, aluminum,
etc.) and rare metal (such as nickel, cobalt, etc.) are consumed dur-
ing the HVs’ manufacturing process. This situation has stimulated
concerns over the depletion of these specific resources. Therefore,
recycle resources from End-of-Life HV and reuse it into HVs’ man-
ufacture process is required, and so, it is imperative to build an HV
recycling system that can be compatible with the environment and
economic at the same time. Japan is the largest HV market, accord-
ing to Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association (JAMA)
(2019a), the sales of HV (passenger vehicle) increased from about
100 thousand to almost 1.4 million from 2008 to 2017 (annual
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: wang.shuoyao.q7@dc.tohoku.ac.jp (S. Wang).
supplementary material 1). In fact, the HV sales have surpassed
the government’s assumption (Ministry of the Environment of
Japan (MOE), 2009). In that sense, some indispensable specific
resource consumption during HVs’ manufacture process will much
larger than originally predicted. Therefore, the security and stable
supplement of these resources are vital for Japan. Also, since Japan
has a long history of selling HV (for more than 20 years already), it
is believed that the time for the outbreak of End-of-Life HV has
arrived, and so, Japan government has established HV recycling
system to recover metal resources already. On the other hand, to
assure the recycling system is running with high environmental
and economic efficiency, it is important to grasp the End-of-Life
HV number in Japan.
Method for predicting End-of-Life Vehicle (ELV) number in
Japan has been introduced (Ministry of Economy, Trade and
Industry of Japan (METI), 2001; Abe, 2014), however, the proposed
method cannot be used to estimate End-of-Life HV number in the
future. On the other hand, Weibull distribution has also been used
to predict the ELV number (Tasaki et al., 2001; Li and Fujikawa,
2017). Actually, this method has been used to predict End-of-Life

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wasman.2020.01.022
0956-053X/Ó 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 S. Wang et al. / Waste Management 104 (2020) 198–206
HV number in Japan already (Yano et al., 2016), yet, since the pro-
spect of HV sales was referenced from the target published by gov-
ernment of Japan, HV sales could be quite different from the actual
situation, and thus, affect the accuracy of the prediction. Also, since
secondhand HV exportation has not been taken into consideration,
and so, domestically recyclable End-of-Life HV number can vary
largely from the actual situation (Japan Automobile Recycling
Promotion Center (JARC), 2019). Currently, collected End-of-Life
HV in Japan is actually much less than previously predicted, unless
a more accurate End-of-Life number can be presented, there could
be an unprepared resource shortage problem, and will bring hard-
ness in establishing a proper resource circulation system from End-
of-Life HV neither domestically nor internationally. This research
though, will take secondhand HV exportation into consideration
when making a more accurate estimation on End-of-Life HV num-
ber in Japan. Moreover, despite secondhand HV, Japan also exports
a large number of secondhand parts, such as Nickel Metal Hydride
(NiMH) battery and the electric motor to developing countries too.
The outflow of these secondhand parts may increase along with
the expansion of secondhand HV exportation. Since these compo-
nents own a huge amount of resources, their flow and future pos-
sibility should also be studied.
2. Materials and method
2.1. Research framework
Since HV sales will affect End-of-Life HV number, and its sales
will be affected by multiple factors, the first step in this research
was to exam the correlation between the sales and each factor,
and predict the HV sales in Japan until 2030. And then, the actual
Japanese vehicle deregistration rate will be used to calculate the
deregistered HV number until 2030. After estimating the overall
deregistered HV number, the result will be used as a standard to
observe the trend in Japanese secondhand HV exportation as well
as domestically collectable End-of-Life HV at present and its trend
in the future1. Furthermore, the flow of vehicle battery and electric
motor will be presumed based on field research and interview
research on battery remanufacture operator and related reports. Sce-
nario analysis considering economic, technology and vehicle expor-
tation policy change will be performed to avoid their effect on the
result. The estimated result will be further interpreted from the per-
spective of resource conservation.
2.2. Materials and methods to predict HV sales in Japan
Previous prediction on HV sales in Japan was referenced from
METI (2010); JAMA (2018a); Toyota Motor Corporation (2017);
Japan economic center corporation (2015) and Fuji Keizai Group
(2018).
To predict HV sales with originality, historical data related to
HV sales and stock will be gathered first (JAMA, 2019a;
Automobile Inspection & Registration Information Association
(AIRIA), 2018a). As mentioned before, many factors are believed
to affect HVs’ sales Factors which may affect HVs’ sales according
to previous studies. Such as ‘‘Gasoline price” (Gallagher and
Muehlegger, 2011), ‘‘average vehicle running distance” (Carnext,
2018), ‘‘Gross Domestic Products (GDP) per capita” (Rezvani
et al., 2015), ‘‘HV model numbers” (Yim et al., 2017) and ‘‘subsidy
policy for the eco-friendly car (as Dummy variable)” (YU et al.,
2017). Therefore, the relationship of these factors and HV sales in
Japan will be checked.
1
Normally, the deregistered vehicle includes exported secondhand vehicle,
domestic ELV and increased domestic temporarily deregistered vehicle.
199
Among all the factors, ‘‘Gasoline price” was investigated from
the Japan Statistics Bureau, Ministry of International Affairs and
Communications (2019). ‘‘Average vehicle running distance” was
collected from data published by JAMA (2018b). ‘‘GDP per capita
in Japan” was collected from GLOBAL NOTE (2019). ‘‘HV model
numbers” was sorted out by the author, and ‘‘Subsidy policy for
eco-friendly car” was inferred from the previous study (YU et al.,
2017) (For detailed information, see supplementary material 2).
The correlation of each factor with HV sales from 2003 to 2017
was tested using multiple linear regression which was powered
by excel and the ones which will affect the sales of HV (P-value

0.1) will be picked out to export HV sales assumption equation.
Moreover, to predict HV sales in the future, we need to know the
trend of each effect factor from 2018 to 2030 as well, and so, we
predicted the future trend of these effect factors from 2018 to
2030 by time series and linear analysis. Upon all these data, future
HV sales were predicted.
2.3. Materials and methods to estimate End-of-Life HV number
The most common method to calculate End-of-Life vehicle
number (Y) was shown in Eq. (1) (METI, 2001; Abe, 2014):
Y ¼ Vsp þ Vs  Vst ð1Þ
where Vsp means ‘‘vehicle stock number in the previous year”, Vs
shows ‘‘new vehicle sales this year” and Vst is ‘‘vehicle stock num-
ber this year”. However, this method cannot predict the ELV gener-
ation in the future. Also, there is a high standard for data integrity to
calculate ELV number by this method (Abe, 2014). On the other
hand, the statistics period for HV sales in Japan was from January
to December of each year (JAMA)2, and was from April to March
for HV stock (AIRIA, 2018a). Also, as for statistics target, JAMA calcu-
lates HV only, while AIRIA’s data includes HV and Plug-in Hybrid
Electric Vehicle (PHEV) at the same time. Therefore, this method
cannot be used to calculate End-of-Life HV in Japan neither in the
past nor in the future. On the other hand, the Weibull distribution
method has been performed to predict the End-of-Life HV in Japan
until 2030 as well (Yano et al., 2016). However, according to Yano,
HVs’ survival rate is still 20% after the vehicle was first registered
for 30 years. This assumption is quite different from the actual situ-
ation of the Japanese vehicle usage pattern. In fact, most vehicles will
be used for about only 13 years before it was dumped in Japan
(AIRIA, 2018b). Also, Yano et al. (2016) did not count exported sec-
ondhand HV either, and so, resource circulation and recycling situa-
tion and problems due to secondhand HV exportation were not
discussed.
This research though, uses the actual vehicles’ deregistration
rate in Japan to calculate the deregistered HV each year (D (i)) until
2030 first (AIRIA, 2018c), the calculation method is shown as Eq.
(2):
X
n
DðiÞ ¼ Sði; mÞ  Rði; mÞ  Sði; mÞ  Rði; m þ 1Þ ð2Þ
m¼1
where S (i, m) indicates, in the year i, the vehicle number which was
first registered before m years ago. R (i, m) means, in the year i, the
cumulative deregistered rate for the vehicle which was first regis-
tered before m years ago. And ‘‘n” stands for the longest operable
age for a vehicle.
On the other hand, there are mainly 3 types of HV passenger
vehicles types in Japan (ordinary passenger vehicle, compact pas-
senger vehicle and light passenger vehicle), which was verified
on the basis of vehicles size and engine displacement (Ministry
of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, 2008).
2
Result of Interview research on JAMA in 2019.
200 S. Wang et al. / Waste Management 104 (2020) 198–206
Fig. 1. Proposed content of deregistered HV.
Vehicle deregistration rate for each kind of vehicle could be dif-
ferent, and so, the proportion of ordinary passenger vehicles, com-
pact passenger vehicles and the light vehicles in the total HV sales
should be discussed first, and HV deregistration number should be
calculated based on that result. However, as a matter of fact, only
one vehicle maker in Japan makes light HV at the moment, and
there is no significant environmental/economic/fuel consumption
advantage when comparing light HV to either an ordinary light
vehicle nor an ordinary HV. Therefore, light HV will not be the
main type of HV in the future. This research will only focus on
the ordinary HV passenger vehicle and compact HV passenger
vehicle. Although the author tried to do an interview survey on
vehicle makers to get information about ordinary and compact
HV sales’ proportion, most vehicle makers did not possess thus
data. Under this circumstance, the proportion of overall passenger
vehicle was used to estimate HV’s proportion (the ordinary vehicle
is 53% and the compact vehicle is 47%) (Japan Automobile Dealers
Association (JADA), 2019).
Moreover, as for the proportion of deregistered HV, besides
‘‘End-of-Life Vehicle”, the deregistered vehicle also includes
‘‘Exported secondhand Vehicle” and ‘‘Increased Domestic tempo-
rally deregistered Vehicle” (METI, 2001; Abe, 2014). Moreover,
according to the result of interview on the Japanese custom in
2018, when the price of exported secondhand HV was under 0.2
million Japanese Yen, it will not be shown on the ‘‘Trade static”,
and so, deregistered vehicle should also include ‘‘exported second-
hand vehicle under 0.2 million Japanese yen” (Fig. 1).
To know the current and future End-of-Life HV and secondhand
HV exportation situation, a discussion on the proportion of the
deregistered HV is needed. To do so, data reflecting actual HV
exportation and recycle situation was referenced (JARC, 2019). Sce-
nario analysis on HV exportation and recycle status in the future
considering the change in secondhand HV exportation rate and sit-
uation; GDP per capita in Japan and Japanese Yen Exchange (the
future trend of these two factors was estimated by time series ana-
lyzation) was also operated based on the data published from
Carsensor (2019), the MOE (2015) and Ecodb net (2019).
2.4. Materials and methods to evaluate HV components’ flow
As mentioned previously, the need for secondhand Hybrid vehi-
cles in developing countries is increasing fast, however, since the
quality of these exported secondhand vehicles may be compro-
mised, the need for repairing parts may also be enlarged. Conse-
quently, End-of-Life HV which are collected in Japan may be
dismantled into vehicle parts, and some of these components
may be further exported abroad. This research focuses on the
NiMH battery and the electric motor of the HV since these parts
contain a large number of resources. The data of collected
End-of-Life HV inside Japan was gathered from JARC (2019), and
the number of recycled NiMH battery was referenced from JAMA
(2019b). Data which shows the flow of used motor was also from
JAMA (2011). Scenario analysis on the flow focusing on NiMH
battery was performed based on the interview research result on
the NiMH battery remanufacturer in 2018.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Result of the analysis on HV sales in Japan
The result shows that HV sales shares little relation with ‘‘Gaso-
line price”, ‘‘vehicle running distance”, yet, it will be affected by the
factors of ‘‘GDP per capita in Japan”, ‘‘HV model number” and ‘‘sub-
sidy policy for eco-friendly car” (Regression analysis result of HV
sales and all effect factor is shown in supplementary material 3).
The result of the correlation analysis is shown in Table 1. Although
the factor GDP per capita in Japan can be considered to be on the
borderline, a higher GDP per capita will surely prompt the sales
of HV considering the price gap between the ordinary vehicle
and hybrid vehicle of the same model can reach almost in 0.82 mil-
lion Japanese Yen (Toyota Motor Corporation, 2019). And so, it is
realistic only when taking the GDP per capita factor into the
consideration.
Thereupon, the formula which can predict HV sales in Japan (y)
is written as Eq. (3):
y ¼ 473324:77 þ 10241:02  X1 þ 18192:84  X2
þ 148793:2 ð3Þ
where X1 means GDP per capita in Japan, and X2 means HV model
number, two numerical value stands for intercept and dummy vari-
able respectively. To testify if the formula was appropriate, this for-
mula was used to calculate past HV sales using historical data. The
result shows that the error between reality and the estimated num-
ber was only around 3% from 2012 to 2017, which means that the
formula shares high accuracy. The HV sales situation and compar-
ison of estimation on HV sales are shown in Fig. 2. HV sales will
be 2.52 million in 2030 and is about 1.8 times larger than in
2017. Also, estimated HV sales in this research is 0.8–1.07 million
bigger than the number estimated by the government of Japan. That
is to say, the resource consumption during HVs’ manufacture pro-
cess will become larger than the government of Japan has predicted.
Also, End-of-Life HV number should also become larger when not
considering secondhand HV exportation.
3.2. Result of the estimation of End-of-Life HV and secondhand HV
exportation in Japan
Based on the presumption on the sales of new HV, and the dis-
cussion result of HV types, the HV deregistration number was esti-
mated. The result shows that, deregistered HV will reach 1.37
million in 2030. To testify whether this estimation was right, it
should be compared to previous data. On the other hand, the HV
deregistration number was not recorded in Japan3. Therefore, this
3
Result of interview research on AIRIA in 2019.
 S. Wang et al. / Waste Management 104 (2020) 198–206
Table 1
Regression analysis result of HV sales and each selected effect factor.
Coefficients
Intercept 473324.77
GDP per capita in Japan 10241.02
HV model number 18192.84
Subsidy policy for eco-friendly car 148793.20
Multiple R 0.99
R Square 0.98
Adjusted R Square 0.98
Standard error 62106.38
Fig. 2. Verification and comparison of estimated HV sales.
research uses the data from 2017 as a standard to testify the accu-
racy of the estimated result. In 2017 there is 0.12 million HV being
exported and 0.02 million HV being recycled in Japan, and the
domestic secondhand HV was not recorded, and so, data in 2019
was used and was 0.06 million. Therefore, in 2017 deregistered HV
is around 0.2 million, this number is quite close to the estimated
number by this research, which was 0.21 million. Accordingly, the
estimated result is considered to be appropriate.
As for the proportion of deregistered HV, averagely 55% dereg-
istered HV was exported as secondhand HV, and only 8% were
recycled in Japan throughout 2013 to 2018. If the situation remains
until 2030, End-of-Life HV in Japan will be 0.11 million, while sec-
ondhand HV exportation will reach 0.8 million (Fig. 3). Moreover,
‘‘Increased domestic temporarily deregistered HV” as well as ‘‘sec-
ondhand HV exportation less than 0.2 million yen”, occupied 34%
of Japan deregistered HV in 2018. This number will increase to
37% in 2030 due to the popularization of HV. This research further
attempted to divide these two kinds of vehicles to gain a more
accurate result. Although ‘‘exported HV under 0.2 million yen” will
not be recorded by the custom of Japan, since all exported HV
needs to perform exportation registration procedure, ‘‘exported
HV under 0.2 million yen” (E) can be calculated by Eq. (4):
E ¼ Er  Ec
Where, Er indicates ‘‘secondhand HV which have performed
exportation registration” and can be referenced from JARC’s docu-
201
Standard error T Stat P-value
223742.70 2.12 0.05
5834.63 1.76 0.10
1332.49 13.65 3.05 * 108
73710.05 2.02 0.06
ment (JARC, 2019). Ec means ‘‘secondhand HV exportation number
counted by the custom of Japan”, this data is referenced from Trade
Statistics of Japan (2019). However, after comparing Er and Ec, Er is
even smaller than Ec. This could because of the diversity in the def-
inition of HV. To be more specific, the most common HV right now
is the HV which uses an engine and a high-voltage driving battery,
and the HV can be driven by the power only from the driving bat-
tery. On the other hand, there is also a kind of HV called ‘‘Mild HV”,
which refers to the HV which uses an engine and a comparatively
low voltage battery, and the mild HV cannot be driven only by the
power from the battery. Although the sales of Mild HV in Japan is
quite small compared to the ordinary HV, the custom of Japan may
have considered it as HV in the static while JARC considered it as
ordinary gasoline vehicles. As a result, although the calculation
method was right, since the data lacks integrity, it cannot be esti-
mated yet. Thereupon, the improvement in data integrity or the
opening of related data is expected.
3.3. Result of the analysis on waste NiMH batteries and electric motors’
flow
Although Japanese vehicle makers have established a NiMH bat-
tery recycling system and collected waste NiMH battery in Japan is
ð4Þ
increasing every year, the total number is still small. According to
the data from JAMA (2019b), waste NiMH battery recycled through
authorized route is only around 7000 in 2018 (annual collected
202 S. Wang et al. / Waste Management 104 (2020) 198–206
Fig. 3. Estimation of deregistered HV, secondhand HV exportation and domestic End-of-Life HV.
waste NiMH battery number in Japan is shown in supplementary
material 4). Moreover, the NiMH collection rate from domestically
collected End-of-Life HV dropped from 52% to 27% since 2012 to
2017 (JARC, 2019; JAMA, 2019b), therefore, in 2017, almost 70%
of waste NiMH battery is being exported to abroad.
It is fair to assume that these uncollected NiMH batteries were
exported as low-quality secondhand parts abroad. Since some
developing countries are trying to improve the air quality by
importing and install secondhand HV, the exportation of such
NiMH batteries may continue to expand. This is because when
the NiMH batteries in exported HVs were broken, original and
authorized repairing batteries can be expensive, most consumers
in developing countries may tend to choose a used one imported
from Japan, and so, Japan may collect less NiMH batteries in the
future.
On the other hand, unlike NiMH battery, HVs’ electric motor is
hard to be dismantled from the vehicle and so, is normally being
exported with the engine as a set, however, the data about electric
motor exportation was little. This is because it is hard to dismantle
motor from the engine, and so, although motor shares high
resource value, it has been neglected during the recycling process.
In fact, it is normal that motors are being scrapped along with the
engine. And so, the recycling status of the electric motor was not
being emphasized due to the lack of economic and resource recov-
ery potential and therefore not being recorded. However, almost
70% of the electric motor collected inside Japan was further
exported in 2011 (JAMA, 2011). Based on these results, the
assumption on the flow of NiMH batteries and electric motors is
shown in Fig. 4.
3.4. Discussion on secondhand HV and components’ exportation
Secondhand HVs’ exportation number will be easily affected by
the age of secondhand vehicles, the rate of Japanese Yen exchange
situation and secondhand vehicle importation/exportation policy.
The flow of HV components will also be affected by remanufacture
technology. Since there is little information on electric motors’
flow information, scenario analysis on components’ outflow situa-
tion in this section will focus on NiMH battery only.
3.4.1. Scenario analysis on the secondhand HV exportation and
domestic End-of-Life HV
This section will bring up 3 scenarios.
The first scenario relates vehicles’ age of service, as mentioned
before, the average age of service for a vehicle in Japan is about
13 years, once the vehicle has been used for over 13 years, it is hard
to be sold again as a secondhand vehicle inside Japan. Also, the for-
eign market will not accept HV which has been used for over
20 years. Based on this assumption, for vehicles that have been
used for over 13 years but less than 20 years, after its deregistra-
tion, it will not be accepted by the secondhand vehicle market in
Japan and will be exported abroad directly. This means that for
vehicles older than 13 years, once it’s deregistered, 92% of these
vehicles will be exported, and only 8% will be recycled in Japan.
Moreover, HVs which are older than 20 years will be recycled
directly in Japan after the deregistration.
The second scenario considers that, due to the economic devel-
opment and the strengthening of environmental rules in develop-
ing countries, the need for secondhand HV from Japan will
decrease, consequently, the collectable End-of-Life HV in Japan will
increase. Therefore, the proportion of secondhand HV exportation
and domestic collectable HV is the same as ordinary vehicles.
The exportation rate and recycle rate for the deregistered ordinary
vehicle in Japan is around 20% and 70% separately according to
data from the Ministry of the Environment (2015).
The third scenario is that the secondhand HV exportation will
be affected by the Japanese Yen exchange rate and GDP per capita
in Japan. For example, during 2012–2013, the Japanese Yen was
cheap, and the secondhand vehicle exportation increased by about
15% to 17% (Planetcars, 2013). The correlation result among sec-
ondhand HV exportation, Japanese yen exchange and GDP per cap-
ita in Japan was tested and was shown in Table 2.
It proves that there is a strong relationship among secondhand
HV exportation, Japanese yen exchange and GDP per capita in
Japan. And so, scenario analysis on secondhand HV exportation
was conducted after predicting the transition of Japanese Yen
and GDP per capita in Japan by time series analysis. The result of
3 scenario analyzation on HV exportation and domestic HV is
shown in Fig. 5.
 S. Wang et al. / Waste Management 104 (2020) 198–206
Fig. 4. Flow of Japanese deregistered HV, NiMH battery and motor.
Table 2
Regression analysis result of secondhand HV exportation and each effect factor.
Coefficient
Intercept 1580016.9
GDP per capita in Japan 8542.88
Japanese Yen Exchange 18.87
Multiple R 0.91
R Square 0.82
Adjusted R Square 0.77
Standard error 21096.19
Fig. 5. Scenario of Secondhand HV exportation and domestic End-of-Life HV (Scenario 1–3).
In the first scenario, secondhand HV exportation will increase
faster from 2020 to 2030 comparing to the basic scenario and will
expand to around 0.9 million while domestically recyclable End-of-
Life HV is 0.1 million. In the second scenario, secondhand HV
exportation will decrease to 0.27 million, while Japan domestic
End-of-Life HV will increase to 1 million in 2030. In the third sce-
nario, secondhand HV exportation in 2030 will reach 0.16 million.
On the other hand, domestic End-of-Life HV will be 0.71 million.
Therefore, in all scenarios, domestically recyclable End-of-Life HV
will be less than 1 million in 2030, this number is much smaller
than previous studies have predicted.
Among all the 3 scenarios, both scenario 1 and scenario 3 are
trustworthy since their setting conditions are close to the reality.
And the estimating result of scenario 1 is almost the same as the
result of the basic scenario analyzed in the paper. On the other
hand, as for the second scenario, it is quite hard for developing
countries to master high-level vehicle manufacturer technology
203
Standard error t Stat P-value
471798.26 3.35 0.01
2120.78 4.03 0.005
6.43 2.93 0.02
and establish their own automobile industry within only 10 years.
Therefore, these countries may keep importing secondhand HV
from Japan massively to improve air pollution problems in the
transportation sector. Based on this consideration, it is fair to say
that in most cases, the recyclable End-of-Life HV in Japan in 2030
will vary from 0.1 million to 0.71 million, and will be hard to reach
1 million.
3.4.2. Scenario analysis on the flow of waste NiMH battery
In this section, scenarios on waste NiMH battery flow
will be discussed. According to the interview research on battery
remanufacture operator, 60% of collected waste NiMH batteries
in Japan can still be recovered as a remanufactured battery. Based
on this fact, 2 scenarios of NiMH flow are considered.
The first one is that, among all the exported waste NiMH batter-
ies, batteries cannot be recovered into a remanufactured battery
will be recycled as raw materials in Japan. In contrast, waste
204 S. Wang et al. / Waste Management 104 (2020) 198–206
batteries collected in Japan will all be recycled as materials despite
the quality, which is a normal situation in Japan. Under this scenar-
io, among all the domestically recycled NiMH batteries, 42% will be
further exported while 58% will be recycled in Japan.
The second scenario is that, among all the exported waste NiMH
batteries, batteries cannot be recovered again will be recycled as
materials in Japan. On the other hand, 60% of waste batteries col-
lected in Japan (which can be recovered) will be exported abroad,
and the left 40% will be recycled as raw materials in Japan. In that
case, 40% domestically collected NiMH battery will be recycled as
material and 60% will be exported abroad. The flow of NiMH bat-
tery and motor in these two scenarios is shown in Fig. 6.
3.5. Result interpretation
In this section, focusing on the underestimated HV sales and
secondhand HV exportation in Japan, the result will be interpreted
from the perspective of resource conservation. To manufacture one
HV, it will cost 14 kg of nickel, 1.1 kg of cobalt, 0.7 kg of neody-
mium (Yano et al., 2015), and 40 kg of copper (International
Copper Association, 2017). These resources are fundamental for
HVs’ manufacture process. As mentioned in Section 3.1, since HV
sales in Japan can be 0.8–1.07 million higher than the prediction
made by the government of Japan, and so, it is plain to see that
about 11,200–14,980 tons of nickel; 880–1177 tons of cobalt;
560–749 tons of neodymium and 32,000–42,800 tons of copper
consumption is underestimated. This equals to 7%~9% of Japanese
Fig. 6. Scenario analysis on NiMH battery and motors’ flow (Scenario 2).
primary nickel consumption in 2017; 20% ~ 27% of Japanese cobalt
consumption in 2015; 14%~19% of Japanese neodymium consump-
tion in 2016; 38%~51% of copper used in automobiles’ cable in
2018 according to Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation
(JOGMEC) (2016–2019).
On the other hand, outflowed resources along with secondhand
HV exportation from Japan be 2240–12,600 tons of nickel, 176–990
tons of cobalt, 98–630 tons of neodymium and 6400–36,000 tons
of copper.
3.6. Research implications and limitations
The estimation method on End-of-Life HV number proposed in
this research is applicable not only in Japan, but also in other coun-
tries if these countries also have related static data mentioned in
this research (including but not limited to vehicle sales number,
vehicle deregistration rate, domestically recycled End-of-Life vehi-
cle number each year, secondhand vehicle exportation number
each year, domestic secondhand vehicle market scale, etc.). Also,
as more and more countries started to develop Next-Generation
Vehicles, they have an increasing urge to promote ELV recycling
rate and efficiency to guarantee essential resources. To fulfill their
purpose, the first step is to estimate recyclable ELV number with
high accuracy (Nordelöf et al., 2019), by considering not only the
domestic vehicles disposal rate but also secondhand vehicles’
exportation situation.
 S. Wang et al. / Waste Management 104 (2020) 198–206
Regarding the limitations of this study, as previously noted, a
significant amount of secondhand HV is flowing into developing
countries. Therefore, these countries will have to face severe
End-of-Life HV recycling problems in the near future as well
(Wang et al., 2019). As such, future research is invited to consider:
(1) the flow of these secondhand HV after exportation, (2) the
emergence time of these HV as ELV, (3) ELV recycling technol-
ogy/policy level in each of the exportation destinations, (4) the
possibility to promote international vehicle recycling and resource
circulation system, and (5) the proper way to allocate the recycling
responsibility and cost between advanced countries (Japan) and
developing countries (secondhand HV exportation destinations).
4. Conclusion
This research focused on the HV in Japan, and present a new
method to estimate recyclable End-of-Life HV in Japan after con-
sidering HV sales and especially secondhand HV exportation. The
result shows that although the sales of HV in Japan can be even lar-
ger than the government of Japan has planned, however, due to the
large quantity secondhand HV exportation, End-of-Life HV which
can be recycled in Japan is little. Comparing to previously studies
and reports, which assume that the End-of-Life HV number in
Japan will reach 0.51 million to 0.65 million in 2030 (Yano et al.,
2016), or even over 1 million (JAMA, 2018a), our research result
shows that if the End-of-Life HV collection rate and secondhand
HV exportation situation in Japan stays the same until 2030,
domestically recyclable End-of-Life HV in Japan will be only 0.11
million (basic scenario).
Moreover, according to the three additional scenarios proposed
in this research, domestic recyclable End-of-Life HV in Japan varies
from 0.1 million to 1 million in 2030, which is smaller than JAMA’s
estimates in 2018 (JAMA, 2018a). Furthermore, the estimate
derived by our scenario analysis is greater than the number esti-
mated by Yano (Yano et al., 2016). This difference may be due to
the fact that the other studies have used Japan government’s target
as the standard for predicting the future HV sales (around 1.4 to 1.8
million in 2030), which is quite less than our estimation on HV
sales until 2030 (2.52 million in 2030), thereby leading to a smaller
End-of-Life HV estimate in their research.
Also, NiMH batteries and electronic motors from End-of-Life HV
in Japan are also flowing out from Japan. Along with the exporta-
tion, a huge amount of fundamental resources for building an HV
will flow out from Japan as well. If this situation was not treated
seriously, there will be an unprepared resource shortage problem
in Japan, especially in the HV manufacturing business. Therefore,
to guarantee a sustainable development of the HV industry, this
situation should be taken into consideration when installing a
proper HV recycling system or making resource security policies
in Japan.
Meantime, as mentioned before, massive End-of-Life HV and
parts will generate in the destination of secondhand HV and com-
ponents’ exportation (such as Russia, Sri Lanka, and Mongolia, etc.,)
in the future. If these countries lack HV recycling policy or technol-
ogy, resources in HV will be wasted, and pollution problems during
the recycling process will also happen. That is to say, besides the
survey on the number of End-of-Life Next-Generation
Vehicle number and flow in these developing countries, detailed
research and comparison on the environmental and economic
effect from End-of-Life Next-Generation Vehicle recycling industry
in each country (advanced/developing countries) using Life-Cycle
Assessments and Life-Cycle Cost analysis should also be performed,
and based on the result, a proper international resource circulation
system between advanced and developing countries should be
proposed.
205
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Acknowledgement
This work was supported by JSPA KAKENHI Grant Numbers
JP19KK0272.
Appendix A. Supplementary material
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wasman.2020.01.022.
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