TESLAS OLD GANG COMES AROUND
CLASS REUNION TO BUSINESS
How much energy makes the world go round?
If we’re talking battery capacity to power the zero-emission technology that gives us a chance to meet climate targets, we have to look to educated guessers.
In a TED interview in late 2022, Tesla CEO Elon Musk predicted the required global battery capacity in 2050 would be 300 terawatt-hours. At that time, we were at about 52 gigawatts.
Mmmm … if a gigawatt is one billion watts, and a terawatt is 1,000 times a gigawatt … yeah, we need a lot more.
Those 300 TWh are the carrot at the end of the stick at Redwood Materials, whose founder is former Tesla CTO JB Straubel, who likely helped Musk come up with that number. The U.S.-based component manufacturer is closing the loop on the battery production supply chain. The drop in costs and climate impacts is both immediate and exponential in the long-term.
The key is recycling old batteries and battery packs from everything from toothbrushes to EVs, capturing an unprecedented level of participation. We also looked at its partnership with Toyota, which is gearing up to produce batteries for a line-up of 30 BEVs by the end of this decade, and pledging to use Redwood’s cathodes and anode copper foil. Now that’s the forward momentum we need.
More predictions:
By 2025, Redwood says it will produce anodes and cathodes for a million EVs annually.
By 2030, that will increase to five million.
Consider that lithium-ion battery demand is expected to grow 500% in the next 10 years, and the mind-blowing number that bears repeating - 50,000 - the miles raw materials travel in a convoluted supply chain before reaching a battery cell factory.
In 2023, Redwood announced it was expanding to Europe, stating that, “Localizing the global battery supply chain across the U.S. and Europe will be critical to driving down the costs and increasing the sustainability of electric vehicles and clean energy storage.”
While OwlVoices has been leaning into non-consumer-driven forms of the energy transition, Europe has always been the fastest-growing EV market, with the right blend of commitments from automakers, government and buyers.
The circularity Redwood promotes demands going where demand is. So, it acquired leading lithium-ion battery recycler Redux Recycling GmbH, enabling it to cannonball into the EU pool of suppliers, customers and industry partners.
Redux has been recycling electric vehicle and E-bike batteries, stationary storage systems and consumer devices like cell phones, laptops and power drills, which slots in perfectly with Redwood’s approach. And it has achieved the same 95%+ materials recovery rate.
It doesn’t hurt at all that its Bremerhaven location puts it on Germany’s North Sea coast, giving it terrific accessibility to Europe and shipping ports. Bremerhaven Port is the largest vehicle import facility on the continent. And not far across the sea is Sweden.
The acquisition, and Redwood’s search for a new location site in Sweden sparked rumors of a partnership with Northvolt, a battery developer and manufacturer that specializes in lithium-ion technology for EVs, and doing everything as sustainably as possible.
Like Straubel, founders Peter Carlsson and Paolo Cerruti were Tesla executives. Northvolt is planning at least five additional facilities, in Europe and North America.
Small circles.
