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The looming electric car battery waste mountain
News Voice assistants
Analysis Recycling
Audio attack blocks Amazon Alexa from hearing you
The looming electric car battery waste mountain Old batteries are hard to reprocess and could become a ticking time bomb for the environment, says Adam Vaughan
Layal Liverpool
“When the clip was playing, Alexa responded to the audio cue ‘Alexa’ only 11 per cent of the time” “Alexa” only 11 per cent of the time, compared with 80 per cent of the time when other music was playing and 93 per cent of the time when no audio clip was playing at all (arxiv.org/abs/1911.00126). Li says attacks like this could be used to prank, confuse or distract people. When asked about the attack, Amazon responded: “We are reviewing the findings of this research paper. What is demonstrated poses very little impact on customers. It would require specific audio samples to be played at the same time as a user saying the wake word and would only increase times where the wake word is not detected.” ❚ 12 | New Scientist | 16 November 2019
Are we storing up big problems with a green transport revolution?
GRAHAM JEPSON/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
ALEXA, can you hear me? A new way to stop Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa from doing what you say has been found. “It was easier to exploit than we expected,” says Juncheng Li at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania. He and his colleagues have created an audio clip that prevents Amazon’s system from responding to the “Alexa” command word if it is played as you speak. Li says he expects that similar attacks would work against other voice assistants too. “These systems are all made in a very similar way,” he says. Li and his team first created their own voice assistant, based on Alexa. They developed an audio attack using an AI that attempted to generate guitar sounds that the voice assistant didn’t respond to. Their goal was to find a sound that the assistant would ignore. The team then tried the attack on Alexa. When the clip was playing, Alexa responded to the audio cue
MORE than a million electric cars were bought globally in the first half of this year, the same number sold across the whole of 2017. This rapid growth is good news for air quality and climate change, but there is a potential sting in the tail. There is no such thing as an electric vehicle (EV) battery waste mountain… yet. However, the number of EVs set to be sold globally this year could one day lead to more than 500,000 tonnes of battery waste, five times the weight of all portable batteries recycled in the European Union annually (Nature, doi.org/ddwm). Those lithium-ion car batteries must be recycled or they will pose an environmental and safety risk, says the research by Laura Driscoll at the University of Birmingham, UK, and her colleagues. “It’s a challenge because most current generation batteries aren’t designed for recycling,” she says. For example, Tesla’s high-end cars use packs of cylindrical battery cells. In some cases these are bonded into a battery module, making them hard to remove and recycle – though the company says it is working to improve this.
issue”, because in Europe there are just 18 firms looking at lithiumion battery recycling, some of which recycle only certain metals. Driscoll says it will be “environmentally disastrous” if there isn’t a strategy for dealing with the batteries. What’s more, stockpiling old batteries poses fire risks. Another concern is batteries being exported to a country like India for a legitimate second use, such as powering a microgrid, but where no recycling facilities exist when they are spent. “That could be a growing time bomb, especially if things take off quickly,” Nissan’s Leaf model, by contrast, says Jonathan Radcliffe at the uses a pouch of rectangular cells University of Birmingham, who which are easier to open and wasn’t involved in the research. separate for recycling. There is no As well as the environmental standardisation among carmakers benefits of mining fewer raw on battery packs, and little sign of materials, recycling would bring any coming soon. “If the battery packs were more an economic opportunity through reclaiming metals from batteries, of a standard design, it would says Driscoll. Cobalt, nickel and make the process at end-of-life manganese are three of the most much easier,” says Driscoll. valuable to recover from them. Most EV batteries should last The success of recycling will around 15 to 20 years. While their depend partly on automation, first decade will probably be in a as robots can do the job cheaper, car, some have already gone on faster and safer than humans, say to a second life as solar power Driscoll and her colleagues. Which brings us back to carmakers: if they standardised battery packs or made them machine-readable, Average lifetime, in years, that would aid automation. of an electric vehicle battery “[Carmakers] are a bit conflicted because they want a competitive storage batteries in homes, and advantage, to make the batteries more will follow. Still, eventually as cheap and high-performance they will need to be recycled. as they can. That might not always Although dumping electric car align with making them in a batteries in landfill, where they certain set of standards,” says can leach toxic materials, is illegal Radcliffe. That is why regulation in the UK, it is unclear whether recycling facilities can scale up fast will be key to manufacturers’ enough. Gloria Esposito of the Low decisions and, in turn, how easily we can tackle that future battery Carbon Vehicle Partnership says waste mountain. ❚ recycling capacity is “definitely an
15 to 20
Analysis Recycling
Audio attack blocks Amazon Alexa from hearing you
The looming electric car battery waste mountain Old batteries are hard to reprocess and could become a ticking time bomb for the environment, says Adam Vaughan
Layal Liverpool
“When the clip was playing, Alexa responded to the audio cue ‘Alexa’ only 11 per cent of the time” “Alexa” only 11 per cent of the time, compared with 80 per cent of the time when other music was playing and 93 per cent of the time when no audio clip was playing at all (arxiv.org/abs/1911.00126). Li says attacks like this could be used to prank, confuse or distract people. When asked about the attack, Amazon responded: “We are reviewing the findings of this research paper. What is demonstrated poses very little impact on customers. It would require specific audio samples to be played at the same time as a user saying the wake word and would only increase times where the wake word is not detected.” ❚ 12 | New Scientist | 16 November 2019
Are we storing up big problems with a green transport revolution?
GRAHAM JEPSON/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
ALEXA, can you hear me? A new way to stop Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa from doing what you say has been found. “It was easier to exploit than we expected,” says Juncheng Li at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania. He and his colleagues have created an audio clip that prevents Amazon’s system from responding to the “Alexa” command word if it is played as you speak. Li says he expects that similar attacks would work against other voice assistants too. “These systems are all made in a very similar way,” he says. Li and his team first created their own voice assistant, based on Alexa. They developed an audio attack using an AI that attempted to generate guitar sounds that the voice assistant didn’t respond to. Their goal was to find a sound that the assistant would ignore. The team then tried the attack on Alexa. When the clip was playing, Alexa responded to the audio cue
MORE than a million electric cars were bought globally in the first half of this year, the same number sold across the whole of 2017. This rapid growth is good news for air quality and climate change, but there is a potential sting in the tail. There is no such thing as an electric vehicle (EV) battery waste mountain… yet. However, the number of EVs set to be sold globally this year could one day lead to more than 500,000 tonnes of battery waste, five times the weight of all portable batteries recycled in the European Union annually (Nature, doi.org/ddwm). Those lithium-ion car batteries must be recycled or they will pose an environmental and safety risk, says the research by Laura Driscoll at the University of Birmingham, UK, and her colleagues. “It’s a challenge because most current generation batteries aren’t designed for recycling,” she says. For example, Tesla’s high-end cars use packs of cylindrical battery cells. In some cases these are bonded into a battery module, making them hard to remove and recycle – though the company says it is working to improve this.
issue”, because in Europe there are just 18 firms looking at lithiumion battery recycling, some of which recycle only certain metals. Driscoll says it will be “environmentally disastrous” if there isn’t a strategy for dealing with the batteries. What’s more, stockpiling old batteries poses fire risks. Another concern is batteries being exported to a country like India for a legitimate second use, such as powering a microgrid, but where no recycling facilities exist when they are spent. “That could be a growing time bomb, especially if things take off quickly,” Nissan’s Leaf model, by contrast, says Jonathan Radcliffe at the uses a pouch of rectangular cells University of Birmingham, who which are easier to open and wasn’t involved in the research. separate for recycling. There is no As well as the environmental standardisation among carmakers benefits of mining fewer raw on battery packs, and little sign of materials, recycling would bring any coming soon. “If the battery packs were more an economic opportunity through reclaiming metals from batteries, of a standard design, it would says Driscoll. Cobalt, nickel and make the process at end-of-life manganese are three of the most much easier,” says Driscoll. valuable to recover from them. Most EV batteries should last The success of recycling will around 15 to 20 years. While their depend partly on automation, first decade will probably be in a as robots can do the job cheaper, car, some have already gone on faster and safer than humans, say to a second life as solar power Driscoll and her colleagues. Which brings us back to carmakers: if they standardised battery packs or made them machine-readable, Average lifetime, in years, that would aid automation. of an electric vehicle battery “[Carmakers] are a bit conflicted because they want a competitive storage batteries in homes, and advantage, to make the batteries more will follow. Still, eventually as cheap and high-performance they will need to be recycled. as they can. That might not always Although dumping electric car align with making them in a batteries in landfill, where they certain set of standards,” says can leach toxic materials, is illegal Radcliffe. That is why regulation in the UK, it is unclear whether recycling facilities can scale up fast will be key to manufacturers’ enough. Gloria Esposito of the Low decisions and, in turn, how easily we can tackle that future battery Carbon Vehicle Partnership says waste mountain. ❚ recycling capacity is “definitely an
15 to 20