Battery Recycling : Redwood Materials launches EV battery recycling

Redwood is launching the most comprehensive electric vehicle battery recycling program, beginning in California, to establish efficient, safe and effective recovery pathways for end-of-life hybrid and electric vehicle battery packs. Ford Motor Company and Volvo Cars are the first automakers to directly support the program, but Redwood will accept all lithium-ion (Li-ion) and nickel metal hydride (NiMH) batteries in the state and welcome other automakers to join us in this effort!

"To truly make electric vehicles sustainable and affordable, we need to create pathways for end-of-life battery packs to be collected, recycled and remanufactured into new battery materials", the company says in a statement. Scaling production of EVs, increasingly from recycled materials, domestically, is the only way to create a circular and, therefore, sustainable and secure supply chain to meet the US’ electrification plans. While the first major wave of end-of-life electric vehicles is still a few years away, Redwood and their initial partners at Ford and Volvo are committed to creating these pathways now.

Annually, 6 GWh of lithium-ion batteries or the equivalent of 60,000 EVs, come through Redwood’s doors - most of the recycled lithium-ion batteries in North America today. Redwood has been ramping their processes in preparation for the first wave of these vehicles to come off roads and are ready to support the battery market in identifying and creating pathways to collect battery packs.

The company says it will work directly with dealers and dismantlers in California to identify and recover end-of-life packs. Redwood will then safely package, transport, and recycle these batteries at their facilities in neighboring Northern Nevada, and then return high quality, recycled materials back into domestic cell production. Overtime, as EOL packs scale, we expect these batteries to become valuable assets that will help make EVs more sustainable and affordable.