Last year, Redwood Materials announced a new electric vehicle battery recycling program (which includes partnerships with Ford and Volvo). Now, Politico is reporting that the US Department of Energy has tentatively provided them with a $2 billion loan, “which the company says will allow it to produce enough battery materials to enable the production of more than one million electric vehicles per year.” year.” The Nevada-based company said it plans to ultimately increase production to 100 gigawatt-hours a year of ultra-thin battery materials from new and recycled sources in the United States for the first time.”
Redwood’s founding CEO JB Straubel, who previously worked at Tesla, said at an event announcing the loan that he had a “front row seat” while working at the Elon Musk-led EV maker for “some of the challenges that the entire industry would face as it scales,” particularly around the battery materials supply chain. “It was kind of clear even then, eight years ago, that this would be a really big bottleneck for the entire industry as it scaled,” Straubel said…
Redwood plans to make battery anodes, which contain copper and graphite, and cathodes, which contain all of the critical metals in a battery, such as lithium, nickel and cobalt, accounting for nearly 80 percent of a battery’s material cost. lithium ions.
A Detroit newspaper reports that Ford will also announce plans Monday to help build a $2.5 billion electric vehicle battery plant in Michigan.
In fact, this year in the United States, some electric cars could become “as cheap as or cheaper than cars with internal combustion engines,” reports the New York Times, specifically because of “increased competition, government incentives and drops in prices.” prices of lithium and other materials for batteries”. .”
