Tesla engineering executive Colin Campbell joins Redwood Materials as technology chief

Redwood Materials, the battery-recycling startup based by Tesla board member JB Straubel, just lately nabbed Tesla’s vice chairman of powertrain engineering, Colin Campbell, to function chief expertise officer.

Based in Carson City, Nevada, Redwood was based by Straubel in 2017 whereas he was nonetheless serving as Tesla’s CTO. Straubel resigned from Tesla in 2019 to concentrate on Redwood.

Campbell introduced the transfer on LinkedIn on Monday, capping a 17-year tenure working for Elon Musk’s electrical car firm in quite a lot of engineering and management roles. He thanked his former colleagues at Tesla for a “once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

“At Redwood, I will continue to work on electrification — but this time, ensuring broad EV and clean energy adoption by solving problems further upstream!” Campbell wrote. “Redwood’s mission is to create a circular battery supply chain, localizing the current fragmented system by creating critical battery components at scale in the US for the first time — and from an ever-increasing amount of recycled content.”

Redwood turns end-of-life electrical car batteries and scrap from automotive factories into uncooked supplies and parts to make new battery cells. Straubel informed CNBC in February that the corporate additionally blends “sustainably mined material” in its manufacturing processes.

Campbell’s departure from Tesla follows an announcement earlier this month that the corporate’s finance chief, Zach Kirkhorn, was stepping down, to get replaced by Tesla accounting chief Vaibhav Taneja, who now holds each the chief monetary officer and accounting function, in line with Tesla’s shareholder disclosure.

Redwood has lured high expertise away from Tesla for years. Another government at Redwood, working chief Kevin Kassekert, beforehand served as vice chairman of individuals and locations at Tesla. More than 120 individuals at the moment work at Straubel’s firm after beforehand working for Tesla, in line with LinkedIn knowledge.

Straubel, who’s credited as a co-founder of Tesla, was elected by the automaker’s shareholders earlier this yr to function an unbiased director on the board.

Tesla didn’t instantly reply to CNBC’s request for remark.

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