A rising variety of firms have emerged over the previous few years decided to cut back waste within the electrical automobile battery market. Chief amongst these is recycling agency Redwood Materials, which has rapidly expanded since its launch in 2017 by Tesla co-founder JB Straubel to turn into the biggest lithium-ion battery recycler in North America. Now the agency is teaming up with electrical business automobile producer Proterra in a deal that will assist enhance the home battery provide chain.
This is the primary publicly introduced partnership between Redwood and an automaker.
Under the settlement, all Proterra batteries can be despatched to Redwood’s services for recycling in Carson City, Nevada. The two firms entered the settlement in January, however have been in dialogue since final summer time, when Proterra reached out to study extra about Redwood’s recycling course of. That led to a visit out to Redwood’s services in Nevada to see if the recycler may course of Proterra battery packs.
“That went really well,” Proterra CTO Dustin Grace instructed TechCrunch. Grace labored for Straubel for round 9 years at Tesla. “We were super excited to see their operation. From there, we started work on our master supply agreement.”
Proterra has despatched round 26,000 kilos of battery materials to Nevada for recycling since getting into the partnership, although this doesn’t characterize the tempo of future deliveries. Overall, Redwood receives 60 tons per day or 20,000 tons of batteries per yr.
The batteries that energy Proterra’s fleets are designed to final the lifespan of the automobile, however the firm presents a battery leasing program that ensures alternative after six years – which suggests loads of helpful life will stay within the battery, as a lot as 80-90% charging capability. To exploit the rest of this capability, Proterra has plans to reuse the batteries in second-life purposes – akin to in stationary storage methods hooked as much as Proterra charging {hardware} – earlier than they head to Nevada.
“First the grading of the battery will occur at Proterra by our remanufacturing engineering team. If the battery is deemed ready for second-life, it will go into one of those applications; if it’s not, it gets recycled,” Grace stated.
Only as soon as all this convenient life is exhausted will the batteries be despatched to Redwood, the place the waste can be reprocessed into beneficial uncooked materials. And with the transit EV market poised to achieve 50% of all annual gross sales by 2025, there can be loads of batteries that may want reprocessing.
The information comes simply weeks after Redwood introduced it was teaming up with e-bike producer Specialized to recycle its batteries. Redwood already has preparations to course of scrap from Panasonic’s battery cell manufacturing on the Nevada Tesla Gigafactory, and with Amazon to recycle EV batteries and different waste. Through these business-to-business partnerships Redwood goals to develop a round battery provide chain, supplying the uncooked supplies again to the producer. The firm additionally accepts electronics and batteries from on a regular basis customers, which might be mailed to Redwood through a mailing deal with posted on its web site.
The partnership is an indication that each firms are pondering large-scale and long-term. A spokesperson for Redwood stated in an announcement to TechCrunch that the recycler is concentrated on “developing the solution for a fully closed-loop recycling for EV batteries.” That means discovering really sustainable, long-term sources of supplies like cobalt, lithium and copper to ultimately transfer past terrestrial mining. And Straubel has been vocal prior to now about his ambition to develop Redwood into one of many world’s largest battery supplies firms.
As extra battery grade uncooked supplies turn into obtainable within the United States, Proterra sees a chance to ultimately develop into home battery cell manufacturing.
“It’s nonetheless early days however we’re making an attempt to set ourselves up for the long run state of this market at scale….
