I think the only way for batteries to be more recyclable by design is for solutions to be mandated.
Otherwise yeah, if making your battery less easy to recycle gives you better performance or even just cheaper manufacturing costs, those are the EV's that are going to sell while those prioritizing recyclability will go out of business.
We've had this discussion recently about Zero potting their pouch cells, which makes the packs difficult to service or disassemble and presumably also difficult to recycle. But any solution that replaced the potting would likely decrease capacity, cooling performance, and water-resistance.
We're still at the point where the first question about any EV is what is what's the range, recharge time, and price. Any decision that doesn't directly impact those three factors in a positive way is not going to be the manufacturers priority.
I've said it before but at this point battery recycling and pack replacements are the biggest issue facing long term EV adoption. If after ten years our vehicles are full of 60kwh of hazardous waste we don't have the capacity or economics to recycle, our attempts to go green are not nearly as effective as we want them to be.
