German based automaker, Volkswagen (VW) Group of America has joined forces with American battery company Redwood Materials to recycle end of life older electric vehicle batteries from Volkswagen and Audi electric vehicles
“Redwood Materials is a great partner to help us accelerate EV adoption in America. Redwood Materials and VW collaboration allows us to move closer toward our goal of closing the loop for a circular EV economy, giving American consumers yet another reason to go electric,” said Scott Keogh, president and CEO of VW Group of America.
“The transition to electric transportation and clean energy is coming, and the batteries powering these technologies present an incredible opportunity. As more and more batteries reach end-of-life each year, an increasing and infinitely recyclable resource become available,” said JB Straubel, Redwood Materials founder and CEO. “Redwood Materials and VW Group of America share a vision to create a domestic, circular supply chain for batteries that will help improve the environmental footprint of lithium-ion batteries, decrease cost and, in turn, increase access and adoption of electric vehicles.”
Lithium-ion battery in an electric vehicle should see little loss of storage capacity over a decade. But eventually, batteries will degrade to the point where it makes more sense to repurpose them as static storage (once they can only hold 60–70 percent of their original charge) or eventually recycle them.
Although the battery-recycling industry is in its infancy, Redwood Materials has emerged as one of its leading players.
Founded by former Tesla executive JB Straubel and funded by Amazon, the startup is already recycling around 6 GWh of lithium-ion cells—the equivalent of at least 60,000 EVs—each year at its factory in Nevada.
Many of those batteries are from consumer electronics, but Redwood also recycles material from Panasonic’s cell production at Tesla’s Nevada factory. And in February, Ford and Volvo became Redwood’s first partners in an EV battery-recycling program.
Redwood Materials and VW collaboration looks like it will work the same way as the Ford and Volvo agreement.
VW Group of America will use the company’s network of VW and Audi dealerships to identify end-of-life batteries and materials, which they’ll package and send to Redwood’s facility in Nevada for recycling.
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