Tesla Co-Founder Aims To Build World's Top Battery Recycler (reuters.com) 18
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Tesla co-founder J.B. Straubel wants to build his startup Redwood Materials into the world's top battery recycling company and one of the largest battery materials companies, he said at a technology conference Wednesday. Straubel aims to leverage two partnerships, one with Panasonic, the Japanese battery manufacturer that is teamed with Tesla at the Nevada gigafactory, and one announced weeks ago with e-commerce giant Amazon. With production of electric vehicles and batteries about to explode, Straubel says his ultimate goal is to "make a material impact on sustainability, at an industrial scale."
Established in early 2017, Redwood this year will recycle more than 1 gigawatt-hours' worth of battery scrap materials from the gigafactory -- enough to power more than 10,000 Tesla cars. That is a fraction of the half-million vehicles Tesla expects to build this year. At the company's Battery Day in late September, Chief Executive Elon Musk said he was looking at recycling batteries to supplement the supply of raw materials from mining as Tesla escalates vehicle production. [...] Straubel's broader plan is to dramatically reduce mining of raw materials such as nickel, copper and cobalt over several decades by building out a circular or "closed loop" supply chain that recycles and recirculates materials retrieved from end-of-life vehicle and grid storage batteries and from cells scrapped during manufacturing.
Established in early 2017, Redwood this year will recycle more than 1 gigawatt-hours' worth of battery scrap materials from the gigafactory -- enough to power more than 10,000 Tesla cars. That is a fraction of the half-million vehicles Tesla expects to build this year. At the company's Battery Day in late September, Chief Executive Elon Musk said he was looking at recycling batteries to supplement the supply of raw materials from mining as Tesla escalates vehicle production. [...] Straubel's broader plan is to dramatically reduce mining of raw materials such as nickel, copper and cobalt over several decades by building out a circular or "closed loop" supply chain that recycles and recirculates materials retrieved from end-of-life vehicle and grid storage batteries and from cells scrapped during manufacturing.
Batteries from Amazon (Score:4, Insightful)
could just go to the recycler right from the shipping center and spare the consumer in the middle.
I buy lots of stuff from Amazon, but batteries are not their strong point.
What? Amazon batteries really good quality! (Score:2)
I have some Amazon labeled rechargeable batteries and they seem really good - Amazon has a base model, but also a higher capacity pro model which I use for some camera equipment like LED lights and flashes.
Amazon Basics made the pick for one of the top batteries on The Wirecutter [nytimes.com], which was backed up by a rather extensive technical video I saw on YouTube where someone did extensive tests including repeated discharge/recharge cycles. (sorry, doin; t remember what YouTube channel that was on).
Re:Batteries from Amazon (Score:5, Insightful)
Batteries are another way that Amazon freeloads. In Europe shops that sell batteries and battery powered devices have to accept used ones for recycling at their own expense. If Amazon even does recycle I bet they don't get a lot of people posting dead batteries to them.
Of course if they can make recycling profitable they will do it.
Lithium is the new oil (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
Umm good luck with that. It's 100% impossible for anyone to monopolize Lithium, because it isn't particularly rare. Estimates of Lithium reserves in existing mines is 80,000,000 tons (80,000,000,000 kg). Let's assume you were a company trying to buy all that up ... the current owners (some of which are unstable governments that may suddenly flip and nationalize your mine even after you bought it fair and square) won't sell it cheap. And guess what there's an excess of lithium. We could convert all 1 billio
Re: (Score:2)
Umm no that's not what I want .. I guess I should have said electric car but I said Tesla to convey an electric car with 250+ mile range.
Re: (Score:1)
Umm good luck with that. It's 100% impossible for anyone to monopolize Lithium, because it isn't particularly rare...
Neither is oil, and look at what Greed N. Corruption did with that fucking industry. Don't even get me started on humans mining blood diamonds so other humans can look pretty.
Let's stop assuming availability would keep Greed in check.
Batteries about to explode (Score:5, Funny)
TFA says:
With production of electric vehicles and ...
batteries about to explode, Straubel says
his ultimate goal is to "make
Make batteries that aren't about to explode?
This will help to stabilise a risky supply chain. (Score:3)
So as they throw their weight around more and more for concessions on the environment, human rights and their borders, materials to make batteries are likely to be a pawn in the game.
Obtaining materials from recycling will be important to cushion disruptions to the supply chain by geopolitics.
Re: (Score:3)
Raw materials are usually extracted with salts and water at places where there is "no environment" ... in China e.g. that are deserts ... seriously?
Re:This will help to stabilise a risky supply chai (Score:5, Interesting)
China is a big refiner, though they're a distant #3/4 in global production (Australia is by far the world's biggest producer, dwarfing the #2, Chile, which in turn dwarfs the next-closest producers... if lithium clays take off, though, the US will likely dominate, and the US will be growing dramatically in the coming years due to Piedmont, regardless).
There's an increasing push however to cut China out of the refining picture - not for geopolitical reasons, but simply because it's inefficient to have your raw materials take such long convoluted paths to their destinations. Tesla for example is building a refining plant colocated at its under-construction Austin terafactory. Piedmont lithium from North Carolina, to Austin, refined, going straight into cells, which go straight into vehicles, which go to consumers only in North America. A much more efficient pathway.
We really should be swapping batteries (Score:1)
How about we don't try to recycle expensive stuff until it actually needs recycling? The lifetime mileage of the average car is about 200k miles, but batteries can last way longer than that. CATL already have the tech to build battery packs which can last 1 million miles [thedriven.io] or more. Thus, a single battery pack can potentially service at least five cars.
NIO have the right idea with their swappable batteries [insideevs.com], and even though they started doing it to reduce charging times they now even offer you the option to lea [barrons.com]
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Very little battery recycling today is used batteries. EV batteries last for such long times, and the production scaleup rates are so dramatic, that the rate of arrival of used batteries will always be many orders of magnitude less than production until the global EV market becomes saturated (e.g. once EVs have largely displaced ICEs globally, once you're on the opposite side of the sigmoid curve). Until then, the vast majority of recycling is manufacturing scrap. Battery production is tricky business, and
Plans to help Straubel's new venture (Score:1)