Tesla co-founder JB Straubel has built an EV-battery colossus in the scrublands of Nevada. He spent the day giving me the first look at everything @redwoodmat has been building.
It starts with *30 acres* of old batteries headed headed for recycling 🧵
Redwood's industrial campus is a 300-acre slope of buildings in various stages of completion. We followed cell phones and EV batteries recycled into 2500-pound bags of fluffy white lithium, then re-made into delicate foils and cathode CAM—the most valuable EV components 2/
It's the first full loop battery supply chain in the US — and probably in the world. Independent Stanford researchers were allowed access to Redwood's data for the most comprehensive real-world study of EV recycling. The environmental savings were 🤯 3/ bloomberg.com/news/features/…
Redwood is currently recycling batteries at a rate of of 20 GWh/year. That's an extraordinary amount —more than some analysts thought would even be available in the US for a few more years. But it's just a shadow of what's to come 4/ bloomberg.com/news/features/…
A key invention is the RC1, the machine that eats the machine. A giant rotating tunnel slow-cooks batteries at ~300C. It uses almost no energy—a self-perpetuating release from the cooked batteries. No oxygen, no fire, no waste. Gases are trapped & made into industrial products 5/
The story photos were by Reno photographer Emily Najera, who was great to work with. Here's the anode foil machine, a first for the US. The copper is 1/10 thickness of a human hair. An unspooled roll could reach 15 kilometers. Gift link to see more👀: 6/ bloomberg.com/news/features/…
“Once we've changed over the entire vehicle fleet to electric, we’ll only have to replace a couple % each year that’s lost in the process,” says Campbell. “It will become obvious to everyone that it doesn't make sense to dig out of the ground anymore” 7/ bloomberg.com/news/features/…
The whole idea of "closed loop supply chains" always seemed a bit far-fetched. Seeing it in action, just a few miles down the road from Tesla's first battery Gigafactory, shows it's both possible and necessary to break China's stranglehold on the EV supply chain 8/
“The simple truth of it is that it’s a damn hard thing to do," Straubel said. "It's just shocking to me, given how much battery capacity is either online now or being built, and yet 100% of its supply chain is imported.” Gift link: bloomberg.com/news/features/…
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