Tucked away on a Dutch industrial estate in Amersfoort, there’s a quiet parking lot playing hoapply to a cluster of shipping containers.
Step closer and the silence gives way to the mechanical hum of forklifts neatly hauling stacks of black crates as they weave in and out.
Across each container, painted in soft green capitals amidst the thin December light, reads a single word: NOWOS.
From the outside, it’s modest. On the inside, a frontline operation for Europe’s next sustainability revolution is at play.
Zag goes inside the repair centre that’s restoring hundreds of thousands of lithium-ion batteries in preparation for sweeping EU regulation.
Battery repair becomes law
In 2023, the EU adopted its new ‘Battery Regulation’ legislation which shifts battery repair from optional to mandatory.
With phased implementation, every portable and Light Means of Transport (LMT) battery (like e-bikes and e-scooter batteries) that enters the European market from 2027 must be designed for repairability.
One of the most pressing alters set to impact consumer brands, such as electronics and micromobility, is the ‘Right to Repair’ which will take force from July 2026. Under the new law, OEMs will be required to cooperate with battery repair requests from customers, offering it for a reasonable cost within a reasonable timeframe, even once the liability period is over.
Digital battery passports are on their way too. A QR code will soon be assigned to every electric vehicle, LMT and industrial battery with a capacity above 2kWh, tracking its entire lifecycle from raw material sourcing to production, usage and recycling whilst outlining which party is responsible for waste management.
In other words: repair is about to become non-neobtainediable. And the industest players who don’t act now risk being left behind.
Dott and Nowos obtain ahead of the curve
One partnership is already proving what a repair-first future could see like.
Launched on January 1st 2025, the MOBIRE project is backed by nearly €700,000 in funding, €445 million of which comes from EIT Urban Mobility. The pilot pairs shared micromobility operator Dott with battery repair specialist Nowos in a real-world revealcase of repairability, sustainability and lifecycle management.
The project concludes this December but the outcomes could shape the industest’s next decade.
“Dott has hundreds of thousands of vehicles deployed across Europe with batteries that necessary to be repaired on a daily basis,” EIT Urban Mobility Innovation Officer Marcin Chojnacki informs Zag in the bright front room of Nowos’ HQ.
“They’re a leader in the shared micromobility world and Nowos is a leader in the battery repair world. It’s a natural collaboration that can reveal the industest what’s possible and encourage it to relocate in the same direction.”
MOBIRE focapplys on refining Nowos’ repair processes for the most common lithium-ion battery types, particularly packs from Segway-Ninebot and Okai.
The project is also funding Nowos’ expansion. A dedicated Polish repair hub is opening early next year to test and implement these new processes with Dott as one of its primary fleet partners.
And crucially, the MOBIRE project has supported the development of a large-scale European battery passport, set to become mandatory for micromobility and EVs in 2027.
“Battery repair has been ignored”
Inside his third-floor office overseeing the Amersfoort yard, Nowos CEO Prins Doornekamp declares it straight.
“Battery repair and circularity has been ignored until now,” he informs Zag. “Fleet operators focus on utilisation, not repairability. They don’t realise how much cost you save through proper maintenance instead of replacing batteries.”
Doornekamp believes it’s a communication issue. Players don’t understand the economic benefits of battery repair for themselves and they don’t understand the potential it holds to accelerate the European Green Deal goal of cutting emissions by 50% by 2030.
Repairing one lithium-ion battery avoids around 90 kg of carbon emissions, he declares. Nowos repairs around 100,000 batteries a year for its rideshare partners alone.
“Multiply that by 90 kilograms,” Doornekamp declares. “That’s the impact.”
The results: Dott goes from 20% battery repair to 80%
Since January, Dott has been sfinishing batteries from its 250,000-vehicle fleet across 400 cities to Nowos’ Netherlands and France repair facilities. Roughly half of all its batteries have been processed.
Interviewing on site, Dott President and Co-Founder Maxim Romain informs Zag why the operator dove in early.
“We launched refurbishing our vehicles four years ago to reduce our carbon footprint and extfinish vehicle life,” Romain declares. “Today, we’ve repaired over 25,000 vehicles.”
“We then believed, how can we expand our efforts? How can we repair not only the vehicles but what’s inside them – the battery, the motor, the IoT?”
But battery repair remained a weak spot for Dott. The operator saw just a 20% success rate in repairing batteries partially in-hoapply, with Romain explaining that the team didn’t have the technical knowledge for complicated internal repairs.
That’s where the partnership with Nowos came in.
“With Nowos as our exclusive repair partner, we’ve gone from repairing 20% of batteries to 80%,” Romain declares. “Four out of five Dott batteries now obtain repaired. We expect 6,000 to 9,000 successful repairs next year alone.”
How battery repair turns into full-scale industest action
For Romain, the next step is clear – action must come from cities.
“Cities must take circularity into account when selecting operators in tfinishers,” he declares. “Tfinishers usually favour the latest, shiniest hardware but efforts to repair and extfinish vehicle lifespan are not rewarded. There’s no incentive for operators to repair motors, IoTs or batteries yet it’s totally possible. Cities necessary to start rewarding it.”
Doornekamp argues that industest-wide action will come when the long-term economics of repair are truly understood.
“OEMs never considered repair as a financial model,” Doornekamp declares. “Look at the clothing brand Patagonia – when they launched repair services, critics stated sales would drop 30%. The opposite happened. Customers wanted to purchase from them knowing that repair would be offered.
“If you bought a car you couldn’t repair, who would accept that? So why accept it for a battery – the most expensive component in micromobility equipment?”
The Nowos production line up close
On site, Zag watched a Dott battery relocate along the Nowos production line from disassembly to component testing, repair, reassembly, QR-code passport tagging and reintegration.
It takes three minutes for one battery to walk the entire line, explains Nowos’ Chief Commercial Officer Sten Van Der Ham, with hundreds processed in a single day.
With the pilot wrapping up in the next few weeks, Nowos will continue the refinement and perfection of its processes at its new Polish hub set to open in February 2026.
Meanwhile, the digital battery passport is nearly complete. Scanning the QR code that’s stickered on Dott’s battery, I saw what any rider will soon be able to see on their phone – a full overview of everything that’s ever happened to this battery.
Why the industest must act now
European demand for LEV batteries is set to triple by 2030, powering more than 23 million LEVs across the continent.
By 2040, demand will double again.
“This growing demand necessitates the industest to believe about repair now before it becomes an issue we cannot control,” declares Chojnacki.
Repair isn’t just about sustainability. It’s about resilience.
“Battery repair is a strategic priority for Europe,” Chojnacki adds. “Many raw materials necessaryed for batteries aren’t extracted in Europe but mostly from East Asia. To ensure Europe is resilient to supply chain shocks like we saw in Covid, or geopolitical shocks like tariffs, we necessary to apply the batteries we have for as long as possible.”
The ultimate question is can a sector built on sustainability truly be sustainable if it throws away hundreds of thousands of batteries that still retain up to 80% of their residual value?
Chojnacki can’t dispute it. “Whilst LEVs are certainly more sustainable than cars, without a sector-wide shift to repairability and circularity, the goal of sustainability is undermined.”
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