In order to tackle climate change, many large economies are attempting to develop strategies to reduce emissions; for example, the UK , US and EU governments have set the ambitious target of reaching net zero by 2050. To achieve such targets, electric vehicles are seen as a key enabling technology as emissions over the lifetime of an electric vehicle are much reduced compared to equivalent petrol and diesel vehicles. For sustainability, however, efficient recycling of the batteries will be essential to help secure supply chains for key strategic elements such as Li, Mn, Co and Ni. In this respect, EU legislation has proposed new regulations including recovery targets for key elements and mandatory minimum levels of recycled content for industrial, EV and automotive batteries. Therefore, it is imperative that strategies are designed to recover these elements efficiently, especially as demands increase on virgin resources. At present, there are two major routes for recycling of batteries. Pyrometallurgy utilises high temperatures to smelt batteries to form an alloy, which is then treated to recover valuable metals such as Co, Cu and Ni. An advantage of the technique is that the batteries do not have to be sorted before undergoing the smelting process. However, the process has some disadvantages, such as the loss of volatile and critical materials (e.g. Li, graphite and phosphorus), and toxic emissions. Furthermore, the use of high temperatures is energy intensive and allows limited volumes (i.e. only a relatively small amount of battery scrap can be treated at a given time). Further steps are also required to separate the metals, and consequently pyrometallurgy is generally followed by hydrometallurgical treatments that utilise acids/solvents to extract metals of interest from the alloy by drawing them into solution . Alternatively, hydrometallurgy can be used to treat cells without the need for prior pyrometallurgical treatment, where battery cells (obtained via disassembly of the battery pack) are first shredded. Cell casing, separator and current collector are subsequently removed, creating a fraction commonly referred to as 'black mass', the smallest fraction after sieving, which contains a mixture of anode and cathode materials. The black mass is then chemically treated; by far the most common combination of reagents in the literature is sulfuric acid as the leaching acid and H2O2 as the reducing agent, which has been shown to improve leaching efficiency. Although most hydrometallurgical routes utilise relatively concentrated mineral acids, which could pose a disposal challenge, as well as comparatively long leaching times to bring all the metals into solution, this route does in principle allow for the recycling of materials through a closed-loop process which aims to regenerate either the original material or to make upcycled or next generation materials using cathode/anode scrap as starting materials. For example a number of publications have used hydrometallurgical processes to make LiNixMnyCozO2 (NMC) materials by leaching the target metals from cathode materials (e.g. LiCoO2, LiMn2O4, LiNi0.33Mn0.33Co0.33O2), readjusting the metal ratio to obtain the desired NMC composition and then preparing the metal hydroxide (NixMyCoz(OH)2) precursor through precipitation. The hydroxide is then annealed with a lithium source to synthesise NMC. In addition to hydrometallurgical recycling, direct recycling can be used to recycle electrode materials or can be combined with hydrometallurgical processes where blended or mixed cathode materials are being processed. Direct recycling seeks to rejuvenate cathode materials with minimal changes while also removing binder and relithiating the cathode material. Battery electrode chemistries are constantly evolving, and may even contain a mixture of chemistries (e.g. blended electrodes). The proliferation of cell chemistries and variability of currently available feedstocks leads to recycling facilities having to deal with mixed waste streams, rendering efficient separation more complex. Despite emerging reports on recycling approaches for single-phase model systems, literature regarding recycling of blended cathode materials or real-life electric vehicle end-of-life material remains sparse. What little literature exists regarding the recycling of blended electrode materials is focused on simple model systems rather than end of life battery materials (as used, for example, in Nissan Leaf Gen 1 cells). Extra considerations need to be taken into account when recycling real life battery materials, for example the presence of binders e.g. PVDF, or more than one cathode phase, e.g. in blended cathodes. A blended cathode contains a combination of two active materials which complement each other during operation. For example, in the LiMn2O4 (LMO) /layered oxide (LO) blended system, addition of a layered oxide (LO) (e.g. LiNi0.8Co0.2O2) reduces Mn dissolution from the spinel phase (completely eliminated once the LO accounts for 15 wt%) hence preventing a decline in capacity during storage. The presence of two cathode materials, however, provides some additional challenges to the recycling process. These are similar to those found if cells sourced from different manufacturers are shredded together, therefore mixing electrode chemistries. The hydrometallurgical reclamation chemistry of such systems, particularly at the end-of-life, is likely to differ significantly to the model systems in the literature due not only to the additional components in real life electrodes (carbon additive and binder), but also the in-use degradation of cathode materials. The only current option is to dissolve all inorganic components to commence recovery/regeneration; this is currently the case for most industrial and consumer LIBs. Given these challenges, if recycling methodologies could target specific phases, this would help improve the efficiency of the process as it would allow the recovery of the materials from the individual cathode materials, and so avoid dilution and cross-contamination of the individual waste streams. In the case of LMO/(NMC/NCA) electrodes, it would avoid dilution of the NMC/NCA waste stream with Mn, thus allowing for easier regeneration of the higher-value NMC phase. In addition, as part of the ReLiB project, automated sorting/disassembly of the packs and cells is being pursued which would ensure a purer feedstock. Disassembly would prevent the need for shredding as the electrode sheets can be removed from the cells, therefore allowing a selective route to be scaled, as both electrodes can be repurposed through short-loop or direct recycling. In this paper, we tackle the challenge of recycling blended electric vehicle cathode electrodes via a selective leaching process (utilising ascorbic acid as both the leaching acid and reducing agent thus eliminating the need for H2O2 addition) that can efficiently remove LiMn2O4 (LMO) from blended electrodes leaving behind the Ni-rich LO phases to be regenerated separately. Ascorbic acid (AA) was selected as the leaching acid as it is more environmentally friendly in comparison to commonly used inorganic acids, such as H2SO4, HNO3, HCl which can emit toxic gases during the leaching process. Ascorbic acid possesses the additional benefit that it can also act as reducing agent to convert insoluble M 3+ into soluble M 2+ , thus avoiding the need to add H2O2. Furthermore, by utilising ascorbic acid to leach the Mn-rich spinel phase selectively, we show that this process can readily be adapted to upcycle to next generation cathode materials. We illustrate the effectiveness of this approach by using off-road end-of-life (EoL) EV batteries sourced from a Gen 1 Nissan Leaf car, representing the first literature for the recycling of such a cell.