JB Straubel sits down with CNBC’s Phil LeBeau at Redwood Materials.
Redwood Materials has attained a $2 billion mortgage dedication from the Department of Energy, the company introduced on Thursday by way of its mortgage packages workplace.
The battery-recycling startup will use the funding to construct and broaden its battery recycling facility exterior of Reno, Nevada. The facility takes end-of-life electrical automobile batteries and automotive manufacturing scrap, processes these, and churns out uncooked supplies and merchandise which might be used to make new EV battery cells, particularly anode copper foil and cathode-active supplies.
Redwood Materials was based by former Tesla CTO and cofounder JB Straubel in 2017 throughout his tenure at Elon Musk’s automobile firm.
Straubel left Tesla to run Redwood Materials full-time in 2019, and several other former Tesla workers have joined him there together with COO Kevin Kassekert, who beforehand labored as a vice chairman of individuals and locations at Tesla.
As CNBC beforehand reported, final 12 months Redwood Materials struck a multi-billion greenback cope with Tesla provider Panasonic.
“These are very capital-intensive projects, and we’re in a competition with Asia to ramp this up and to bring these supply chains and manufacturing operations back to the US,” stated Straubel on CNBC’s The Exchange on Thursday.
He added, “The US battery demand and EV demand is growing…but we have a long way before that supply chain is predominantly moved to the US.”
The Director of the DOE’s Loan Programs Office, Jigar Shah, wrote in a put up in regards to the new mortgage dedication:
“In order to meet the needs of the rapidly growing EV market, the United States will need to expand battery recycling capabilities, as well as grow our domestic capacity for producing battery precursor materials. By lowering the cost of the critical materials for lithium-ion batteries using recycled materials, electric vehicles can become more accessible to lower income communities.”
With the goal of reducing greenhouse fuel emissions over the following decade, President Joe Biden pushed for and signed the $430 billion U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in August 2022. The DOE’s new mortgage to Redwood Materials is available in half from that regulation, which has to this point resulted in additional than 100,000 new inexperienced jobs being introduced.
The DOE says it appropriated $55 billion in new estimated mortgage authority for its Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing program via the IRA. This identical program as soon as helped Tesla get its begin — and Tesla repaid their mortgage early and grew right into a juggernaut, in sharp distinction with cleantech firms that fizzled like Solyndra, for instance.
Redwood Materials has a pilot line up and working for manufacturing of anode copper foil in Nevada already. It is aiming to help the manufacturing of greater than 1 million EVs per 12 months, the DOE stated in its put up, which may assist drivers keep away from an estimated 3.5 million tons of CO2 and different tailpipe emissions, yearly.
While Tesla might have been the birthplace of Redwood Materials, and a accomplice of the corporate at the moment, it may compete with the recyclers on expertise finally. In its 2022 annual monetary submitting with the SEC, Tesla stated, “We have agreements with third party battery recycling companies to recycle our battery packs and we are also piloting our own recycling technology.”
Source: www.cnbc.com