Shift4Good, the global impact venture capital fund focused on sustainable transportation, recently announced a major investment in lithium-ion battery repair and maintenance. A round of equity funding that also included Fair Capital Impact Fund and Goeie Grutten Impact Fund has resulted in a €6m investment in Dutch battery repair specialists, Nowos.

Founded in 2019, Nowos started by repairing batteries for e-bikes, e-mopeds, and scooters from major European operators including Swapfiets, Dott, Felyx, Qwic, Voi and Dance. It is now a specialist in the lifecycle of a lithium-ion battery.

NOWOS homepage.jpg
NOWOS homepage (Image Credit: NOWOS)
NOWOS homepage

According to Bike Europe, Nowos repaired 90,000 batteries in 2024 alone, which equates to 310,000kg of waste diverted from premature recycling. According to the same article, the latest funding means there will be new repair hubs in Poland in 2025 and Germany in 2026 – adding to Nowo’s current operations in the Netherlands, France and the United Kingdom. 
 

What’s at stake? A future battery strategy for wise use of resources

This move seems good news for UK e-bike users in the long term. It stands to reason a minor repair on an out of warranty battery is going to be cheaper than having to send your defunct battery for recycling and buying a new one, most likely at a cost of several hundred pounds. We have previously explored your options in detail in our article on faulty or worn out e-bike batteries.

However there is clearly an industry debate that may well impact the cost and availability of replacement e-bike batteries in the future, sparked off by the Batteries Regulation – in the words of the European Commission, “the first piece of European legislation taking a full life-cycle approach in which sourcing, manufacturing, use and recycling are addressed and enshrined in a single law.”

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Riverside 540e hybrid - battery (Image Credit: Farrelly Atkinson)

As detailed in the above article, official e-bike industry advice is to only replace a battery with one that comes from the same manufacturer and is of exactly the same spec. This is for good reason – battery, controller and motor have all been designed to work safely together and using a ‘non-original’ replacement pack potentially introduces uncontrolled risks.

But not all older batteries are still available as new replacements so the choice then becomes either repairing the current battery or scrapping the whole bike. The former is potentially dangerous if you use a repairer who is not a true expert whilst the latter is clearly a huge waste of resources. 

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Gouach Infinite Battery (Image Credit: Gouach)

Up until now industry advice has been a point blank counsel against repair. But with 2027 the current date for Euro law to stipulate that consumers will be able to remove and replace the portable batteries in their electronic products at any time of the life cycle, those with true expertise in battery repair – like Nowos, Heskon and Gouach – could stand to become key players in a potentially more sustainable battery replacement industry.