Tesla co-founder and Redwood CEO JB Straubel has established an electric battery “colossus” in western Nevada as he seeks to challenge the strong dominion of China in the global battery industry.
Initial look inside the Nevada EV battery recycling site
Redwood CEO JB Straubel toured Bloomberg reporter Tom Randall (@tsrandall) at the company’s electric vehicle battery recycling site in Nevada on Thursday.
As per the report, Redwood Materials officially launched its first commercial-scale production line for the fine black powder or cathode active material necessary for electric vehicle battery manufacturing.
This key material apparently accounts for one-third of the overall battery cost. In that sense, the company aims to produce enough cathode active material to support an annual production of 1.3 million+ electric vehicles by 2028.
It is indeed a remarkable advancement for the US battery supply chain, considering its heavy reliance on China. China currently dominates 70% of the global lithium refining capacity. Moreover, it controls 95% of total global production for other key EV materials.
In this sense, Redwood aims to challenge China’s dominance by developing a local supply chain with recycled critical materials.
“The responsibility weighs on me. I remember feeling it in the early days at Tesla, when the other manufacturers hadn’t done crap yet, and we had a very palpable sense of holding the flag and running out into the field and saying ‘EVs are the future!’ We felt that if we failed, well, nobody’s going to follow. This is a little déjà vu.”
Redwood CEO JB Straubel
Constant innovation
Redwood’s remarkable battery recycling progress attracted researchers from Stanford University. The company authorized them to access its data over the past two years to analyze the sustainability of its battery recycling process.
One of the Standford researchers, Will Tarpeh, shared their discovery that the company is constantly changing its battery recycling process by the time they conclude analyzing part of the process.
“Month to month, they were always tweaking. That made it challenging but was fantastic to see. They are navigating very well through a world where everything is shifting very quickly.”
Will Tarpeh, chemical engineering assistant professor and one of the senior authors
Revolutionizing battery production
Impressively, Standford researchers discovered that Redwood’s battery recycling and refining processes can actually reduce CO2 emissions by a whopping 70% compared to the conventional recycling approach. It also yields a 40% reduction in CO2 emissions compared to competitors’ recycling processes.
Redwood’s process does not waste any materials from the scrapped batteries. Moreover, it does not release any water from the facility apart from the sanitary waste. The facility is also 100% reliant on electricity, cutting the need for gas lines.
In addition, Redwood built the facility for scale to support rapid disassembly of assorted batteries without manual sorting.
“Once we’ve changed over the entire vehicle fleet to electric, and all those minerals are in consumption, we’ll only have to replace a couple percent each year that’s lost in the process. It will become obvious to everyone that it doesn’t make sense to dig it out of the ground anymore.”
Colin Campbell, Redwood CTO, and ex-Tesla Powertrain Engineering Head
In hindsight, CEO Straubel departed from Tesla in 2019 as he worried that the current supply of key battery materials could not match the surging demand for electric vehicles. Fortunately, he managed to establish Redwood as the largest lithium battery recycler in North America, making his decision to leave Tesla worthwhile.
