When you read about it, you’ll learn that the average lithium battery can take about 300-500 charge cycles before its considered worn out. What exactly changes inside the battery for it to reach a worn out status?
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Ok so super ELI5.
You have a lithium substance on one side, usually a carbon substance on the other side, and some transfer medium liquid like stuff in the middle.
When you use the battery, lithium atoms float from the lithium side over to the carbon side.
When you recharge the battery the lithium atoms go back.
The power of the battery is in how far the atoms move before they hit the other side, but the issue is that when you recharge the battery, there is no knowing where the lithium atoms will pile up back on the lithium side. So eventually little mounds start to appear, and these end up a tiny bit closer to the carbon side than before. Which then attracts more lithium.
You do the discharge, recharge cycle enough, and those little mounds turn into relative mountains which stretch across the transfer substance and can even touch the carbon on the other side. Effectively shorting out the battery.
As the mountains are building up, the potential energy of the battery is reducing.
This is why they tell you that it is not the use of the battery that uses it up, its how many cycles you put on it.
If you could go into the battery and squeegee those mountains back down, without destroying the battery, you could effectively recycle it.
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