– and an unfathomably profitable market in recycling the valuable metal from all those batteries.our years ago Tesla’s CTO JB Straubel was ramping up battery output at its sprawling Gigafactory near Reno, Nevada when inspiration struck: Why not start a company to recover metals from the factory’s scraps and other used electronics and turn them back into usable lithium, cobalt and graphite to make new batteries.
In 2020, Tesla sold around 500,000 electric cars, each one requiring thousands of lithium-ion battery cells and isthis year. Battery demand is further being stoked as giants General Motors and Volkswagen aggressively pursue their EV plans alongside all-electric startups like Lucid and Rivan. Prices of core battery materials like lithium and cobalt are skyrocketing.
Straubel is tightlipped on Redwood’s financials but the privately held company is probably doing around $20 million in revenues. In July Redwood raised $40 million from Amazon, Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Palo Alto-based Capricorn Investment Group. That brings its total outside funding to $48 million at a $217 million valuation according to PitchBook. Straubel has likely invested millions more from his own fortune which is estimated at $900 million.
Where Elon Musk is verbose and relishes his status as a clean-tech icon, the low-key Straubel, who trained as an engineer at Stanford, chooses his words carefully. The electric car revolution the two men envisioned when they first met 18 years ago is finally coming to fruition. The Biden Administration is calling for a range of incentives to wean drivers off gasoline and onto electricity, seeking a huge increase in domestic production of battery-powered autos and heavy-duty trucks.
It will never happen..at least in vehicles !!
Germany electric car and 60% US states marginal emissions = 550g CO2/kWh 550 x 0.2 kWh x km = 110g CO2. petrol car = 120g CO2. car production: +9tons CO2. battery = +5tons CO2. another battery after 10-12 years: +5t CO2. does this really help to reduce CO2?
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