In the face of growing efforts towards a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions generally, and CO2-emissions specifically, car manufacturing companies increasingly focus on a gradual electrification of their fleets. For energy storage in these cars, lithium-ion batteries are the most looked to technology due to their, in comparison to other current battery technologies, formidable energy and power densities. In the future, this development implicates a rising demand for lithium-ion recycling capacities all over the world. This has prompted the Chair of Thermal Processing Technology at the Montanuniversitaet Leoben to develop a new pyrometallurgical recycling system for these batteries. The work at hand aims to investigate the behavior of two of the most promising cathode materials, namely Lithium-Nickel-Manganese-Oxide (NMC) and Lithium-Nickel-Cobalt-Oxide (NCA), and their proneness to reduction at high temperatures. For this purpose, analyses in a heating microscope as well as an induction furnace were performed on these materials with and without the addition of carbon. Additionally, in order to deduct well-founded conclusions on reduction temperature ranges, a simultaneous thermal analysis, consisting of thermogravimetry and differential thermal analysis, was conducted. In both cases, over 75% of the valuable metals contained in the cathode material were chemically reduced. While Lithium and part of NMC’s manganese left the reactor as gas or small particles, all other metals were melted and encountered within a metallic alloy after the process. For NMC, the transfer coefficients for the currently highest-priced metals, cobalt and nickel, amounted to approximately 90% each. In the case of NCA, the coefficients were calculated to be around 60% for cobalt and 100% for nickel.