Featured Toyota, Stellantis to build EV-battery factories in North America

Seriously? You seem to be following the EV car market and you haven't heard of the former Tesla CTO company?

Ex-Tesla CTO JB Straubel's Redwood Materials tackles battery recycling

Former Tesla CTO and the mastermind behind many of Tesla’s core technologies, JB Straubel, started Redwood Materials in 2017 to help address the need for more raw materials and to solve the problem of e-waste. The company recycles end-of-life batteries and then supplies battery makers and auto companies with raw materials in short supply as EV production surges around the world.

Mike

 

Oh, I've heard of it. They don't have now, nor do they plan to have the capacity to recycle all the batteries being deployed now or especially in the near future. And we're talking about Toyota investing.

 

Battery factories weren't made overnight, and recycling systems require a certain level of old batteries in place in order to operate economically.

Toyota was recycling the NiMH packs from Prii. They even put some to use peak shaving at Japanese stores. Don't see why they would overlook the end of life part for the lithium packs they use.

What systems are in place to recycle fuel cells and carbon fiber?

 

Irrelevant, but fuel cells are easy to recycle while all forms of fiber-reinforced-plastic currently have a lot of trouble. Interestingly, that's an area my org is working on.

CoMET Aids Researchers and Partners in Reaching the Stars—and the Market | News | NREL

 

Wow! You hoped that "someone" was investing in battery recycling, but when it is a former Tesla person it doesn't count because it doesn't already have the capacity to recycle all batteries deployed.
News Flash: Most of the batteries currently deployed have many years of useful life left until they need to be recycled!

Mike

 

I remember when pop bottles had a deposit and we would collect them for fund raisers. Perhaps all batteries should have an inflation adjusted deposit and an RFID or bar code chemistry code for automated sorting.

Bob Wilson

 

Hence why I hope they are investing in recycling capacity.

 

They still do, at least in some states:

 

Starter batteries, and some other car parts, have core charges that work like a deposit.