Redwood Materials, the battery recycling effort began by Tesla alum JB Straubel, sees its mission as essential for ramping up home content material in American EVs—in addition to for serving to automakers meet sustainability targets.
Last month, Redwood detailed a method it’s really making that course of occur on the bottom: It’s began a web-based portal for end-of-life EV batteries. Through it, U.S. automotive dismantlers—also referred to as salvage yards—can enter particulars concerning what they’ve and get an on the spot provide for his or her battery pack.
Automotive recycling isn’t as centralized as you may suppose, however by means of a tangle of connections and partnerships for numerous elements, a lot of the supplies in outdated automobiles discover a new use. In the U.S. there are greater than 9,000 automotive recycling places, using 140,000. Redwood says automobiles are probably the most recycled merchandise within the U.S., with round 12 million automobiles recycled per 12 months.
According to the Automotive Recyclers Association, about 86% of auto materials content material is recycled, reused, or used for “energy recovery,” and from the mixed efforts of recyclers about 8 million gallons of gasoline and diesel, 24 million gallons of motor oil, and 96% of lead-acid batteries are collected for reuse or recycling.
At the identical time, that is when the variety of EVs reaching recyclers is accelerating, and it’s an vital step in establishing the U.S. battery-material ecosystem.
Toyota and Redwood Materials battery recycling
Yes, the afterlife on your Leaf or Prius battery
Just in 2024, Redwood expects 250,000 electrified automobiles to achieve end-of-life. That features a complete lot of hybrids. Toyota, for example, earlier this month confirmed plans to supply recycled materials for Toyota EV batteries from Redwood, with the hope of recovering supplies from earlier retired Prius hybrids.
Several different automakers have made offers with Redwood. VW and Audi EV batteries might be retired by means of the agency, and shipped to Nevada for recycling, and a Ford partnership seeks a “closed loop” round EV provide chain with Redwood. The agency will plan an “outsized role in bringing the battery supply chain home,” in keeping with Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, and it’s receiving a $2 billion DOE mortgage for enlargement.
Nissan prototype 60-kWh battery pack – Nissan Technical Center, October 2015
Redwood launched a California pilot program in early 2022, and after the primary 12 months of this system it reported 1,268 battery packs collected from 19 completely different EV and hybrid fashions, 82% of which included lithium-ion cells. It claims that it was in a position to get well greater than 95% of lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper, and different supplies from the packs.
As a part of that program, Redwood is already working with automotive dismantlers.
Toyota and Redwood Materials battery recycling
No parallels to the catalytic converter epidemic
Given the massive variety of recyclers, and rampant points with catalytic converter theft, are there any such considerations for EVs? Redwood instructed GCR that it particularly approves every transaction, with car title and serial numbers verified, and that it has a workforce prepared to assist dismantlers with questions or considerations in processing EV battery packs.
An EV battery pack is not at all a catalytic converter both, and it requires time and talent to take away. Through its portal, as soon as Redwood accepts the sale, it handles transportation of the pack, which may typically be 1,000 kilos or extra.
“Everyone we worked with in the dismantler community wants to do the right thing and they were excited to partner directly with Redwood to ensure responsible recycling,” reported Redwood of its California program, noting that the dismantler neighborhood helped it discover probably the most environment friendly option to deal with, package deal, and ship heavy EV packs.
Now, it’s time to scale up.
Source: www.greencarreports.com
