100,000+ EVs on the Road, Zero Plan for Dead Batteries — Who Pays?

Sri Lanka's EV fleet shot past 100,000 by mid-2026, up from around 30,000 just a year earlier. But an Auditor General report released in September found there's still no national system to track, collect or recycle the lithium-ion packs once they die — no gazetted guideline on handling used batteries, no local recycling plant, and import paperwork that doesn't even separate EV batteries from other goods. For now most owners just keep the old pack for solar or home backup, so the problem is hidden rather than solved. One side says this is a ticking time bomb: thousands of hazardous battery packs with nowhere proper to go, and whoever's EV turns five in a few years could be stuck paying to export a dead battery out of pocket. The other side says it's premature panic — home-storage reuse already stretches battery life by years, and recycling capacity will show up once there's real volume to justify the investment. If your hybrid or EV battery has already failed, what did you actually do with the old one, and what did it cost you? ඔයාගේ EV/hybrid බැටරිය මැරුණාම මොනවද කළේ? සත්‍ය වියදම කීයක් වුණාද?