The battery intake field, where 30 acres of old batteries await the recycler at Redwood Materials in Nevada.
Photographer: Emily Najera/BloombergTesla Co-Founder JB Straubel Built an EV Battery Colossus to Rival China
A first look inside the high-tech recycling machine that’s gobbling up the equivalent of 250,000 dead EV batteries a year.
In the scrublands of western Nevada, Tesla co-founder JB Straubel stood on a bluff overlooking several acres of neatly stacked packs of used-up lithium-ion batteries, out of place against the puffs of sagebrush dotting the undulating hills. As if on cue, a giant tumbleweed rolled by. It was the last Friday of March, and Straubel had just struck black gold.
Earlier that day, his battery-recycling company, Redwood Materials, flipped the switch on its first commercial-scale line producing a fine black powder essential to electric vehicle batteries. Known as cathode active material, it’s responsible for a third of the cost of a battery. Redwood plans to manufacture enough of the stuff to build more than 1.3 million EVs a year by 2028, in addition to other battery components that have never been made in the US before.