Electric vehicles are the next big thing and are something that more people and companies are looking forward to. As investment opportunities in the segment open up, auto giant Toyota is ready to join hands with Redwoods Material, which is a battery recycling company that is directed by JB Straubel, the co-founder of Tesla. The company collects and recycles vehicle batteries to refurbish or break them down to take out material that could be used to make new batteries.
The company Redwood mainly focuses on producing materials for anodes cathodes which are the main components of a battery cell. It aims to make a closed-loop supply chain for electric vehicles by taking batteries from the old EVs and turns them in to batteries for the new cars. Toyota is preparing itself to launch its first long-range battery powered vehicle and it is currently not focusing on newer cars and is looking forward towards partnership efforts. Toyota and Redwood are focusing on the first wave of battery electric vehicles that are nearly 20 years old and are ready to be disposed. That would mostly mean the first generation Toyota Priuses in California.
Redwood has expressed that in future it wishes to have some operations near the North American battery plant that was recently announced by the auto giant. However, it has to be noticed that the methods and technology used by Redwood are not completely reliable and has just launched its program to deal with the old electric vehicles with Ford and Volvo as its partners. The company has been planning to handle batteries for quite some time but its capacity to try it at a bigger scale has not yet been tested.
The company recently revealed that it received nearly six gigawatt-hours worth of batteries a year for recycling and added that it could be producing 100 GWh worth of components by 2025. It has to be noticed that the making of EV batteries is an expensive affair and many companies struggle to do it at a large scale.
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