Redwood Materials is partnering with Volkswagen Group of America to recycle all end-of-life batteries from Volkswagen and Audi electric vehicles. Redwood’s mission is achieved by working with leaders across the electric vehicle and clean energy industries who share their mission to create a domestic, closed-loop battery supply chain.
Redwood will work directly with Volkswagen Group of America’s network of more than 1,000 dealers to recover, safely package, transport and recycle end-of-life EV battery packs from Volkswagen and Audi vehicles. At the Northern Nevada facilities, they will recover more than 95 percent of the metals like nickel, cobalt, lithium and copper from their batteries and then, rather than exporting those metals overseas, use them to remanufacture anode and cathode components that will supply back to U.S. battery cell manufacturers without these minerals ever leaving the country.
Annually, 6 GWh of lithium-ion batteries, enough to build more than 60,000 EVs, come through Redwood’s doors – the majority of the lithium-ion batteries recycled in North America today – and they have been ramping up processes in preparation for even more batteries as the first wave of electric vehicles begins to retire from our roads. Redwood’s partnership with Volkswagen Group of America will increase what’s available for Redwood to recycle so that they can make even more sustainable and affordable battery materials. As more and more electric vehicles reach end-of-life, their battery packs will provide a sizeable, infinitely recyclable resource that can continue to make EVs more and more sustainable and affordable.
Batteries are the most expensive part of an electric vehicle, often accounting for 20 to 30 percent of the vehicle cost. To drive down the cost of electric vehicles material cost must be reduced and this can be done by localization and use of recycled content.
Redwood’s end-to-end process is recapturing the value of those lithium-ion batteries and passing it to U.S.-based cell manufacturing partners, ultimately making EVs and American manufacturing more sustainable and affordable. Given the distance that materials inside batteries must travel from mine to battery cell – more than 50,000 miles – and these metal’s infinite recyclability, the initial carbon cost of mining these materials can be reduced every time, making batteries more and more sustainable.
Published in the September 2022 Edition
