I couldn’t read the original article (paywalled), but are they talking about using this aluminum for casted large body parts (crash protection, weight, etc) or just for battery casings? If it’s for battery casings does it still all need to be melted down before use?
As an aside, this is one of the main reasons why we can’t have cleaner refineries in the USA. It is nearly impossible to get a new refinery permitted today, so we continue to use some really old, less efficient, and dirtier ones to produce various products from crude oil.
Permitting issues sometimes cause additional absurdly large wastes of energy, as I wrote about a few months ago here where copper source material is shipped all the way to China to be smelted, and then right back here, because the local smelter can’t get permitted.