Redwood Materials Gears Up To Recycle First Big Wave Of Used EV Batteries

In 2024, a 4th cardinal aging electrical vehicles will beryllium fresh for dismantling and recycling. That could beryllium much than a 30% jump from 2023 — and Redwood Materials, which intends to beryllium nan country's starring EV artillery recycler, is ramping up its operations to hole for nan coming onslaught.

The institution created by Tesla cofounder JB Straubel, which besides makes components for caller batteries from materials it recovers from aged ones, expects immoderate 250,000 aging Tesla Model S sedans, Nissan Leaf hatchbacks, Toyota Priuses, Prius plug-ins and different hybrids, to move up astatine dismantler tons successful 2024 — pinch much coming each twelvemonth after. That’s up from betwixt 150,000 to 200,000 this year. To guarantee it gets arsenic galore of those aged batteries arsenic possible, it’s launched a web portal to quickly springiness car dismantlers acquisition offers and schedule trucks to haul them distant for recycling.

“Next twelvemonth is benignant of nan first awesome activity of EVs coming disconnected nan road, owed to nan early ramp of EVs successful nan 2012 to 2014 clip range. That’s crossed afloat EVs but we besides spot a important number of hybrids, chiefly Prius, and plug-ins,” Cal Lankton, Redwood’s main commercialized officer, told Forbes. “Every twelvemonth location are much and much EVs connected nan roadworthy truthful you tin project, utilizing analytics astir artillery degradation complete clip and really nan wide car fleet turns over, an appraisal astir really galore cars are going to travel disconnected nan roadworthy successful a fixed timeframe.”

That’s bully news for nan intimately held institution that wants to retrieve arsenic overmuch of nan high-value metals successful EV and hybrid batteries — including nickel, cobalt, lithium and copper — arsenic imaginable and move them into cathode and anode materials for caller cells. Packs from dismantlers adhd to what Redwood recovers from electronic discarded processors, artillery mill scraps and car companies it useful with, including Toyota, Ford, Volvo and Volkswagen. Redwood has raised astir $2 cardinal and secured a $2 cardinal national indebtedness to grow recycling and constituent accumulation operations astatine its Nevada works and a caller installation nether building adjacent Charleston, South Carolina.

Keeping EV Batteries Out Of Landfills

Efforts by Carson City, Nevada-based Redwood and competitors for illustration Li-Cycle to grow artillery recycling travel arsenic states including Washington, California, Colorado, New Jersey and Illinois formulate rules to support EV batteries retired of landfills. Dismantlers aren’t judge caller regulations are needed since they’re making money reselling aged batteries that are still usable aliases sending them to recyclers for illustration Redwood, not junking them.

“Putting them into landfills would make nary sense,” said Russ Spaulding, proprietor of Spaulding Auto Dismantlers successful Tacoma, Washington, which useful pinch Redwood. That’s because moreover aged lead acerb batteries, which tin beryllium recycled, waste for up to $12 while hybrid and EV packs spell for overmuch more.

“These batteries are worthy respective 100 dollars astatine nan very minimum. … They’re not going to nan landfill,” he said.

California since 2018 has been formulating guidelines for artillery recycling, pinch input from an manufacture advisory group, but hasn’t yet issued a last standard.

Redwood said it supports authorities rules that would require automakers to create programs to retrieve aged batteries but is concerned astir really they’re structured. For example, it opposes mounting up a 3rd statement to oversee artillery reuse and recycling efforts, which has been suggested successful California, arguing it could make nan process much costly. It besides thinks it’s unnecessary since dismantlers are already financially incentivized to waste each battalion they have.

That moreover includes lithium-ion batteries progressive successful accidents that whitethorn person caught fire, said Lankton, who antecedently managed fleet and world operations for Lyft and was Tesla’s vice president of power sales.

“There’s a different group of shipping requirements that creates immoderate complexity, but it's each solvable. There's still worth successful there; nan metals don't needfully each conscionable combust simultaneously,” he said. “We make it inert done our proprietary thermal curen process, and past move that backmost into halfway minerals that we tin extract.”

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