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Soon, the automaking world may care as much about recycling as your new agey family member. Specifically, battery recycling—with EV adoption set to surge in the coming years, crucial metals like lithium, cobalt, copper, and nickel could be in short supply if companies rely on new mining alone.
Case in point: Last week, Ford invested $50 million in Redwood Materials, an EV battery recycling company led by a cofounder, and former CTO, of Tesla. As part of the investment, Redwood will help Ford recycle its own EV battery materials and create a “closed loop” supply chain.
- The battery recycling company claims it can recover 95% of the elements used in batteries, and it also closed a $700 million funding round in July.
- It’s partnered with Panasonic and Amazon to recycle lithium-ion batteries and other e-waste in the past.
Battery recycling is key to building a sustainable all-electric future, experts say, both because the supply of necessary metals is finite and because of the inhumane conditions under which certain minerals, like cobalt, are often mined.
- Cobalt and nickel are more at risk of shortages than lithium, but even that relatively abundant element will face supply issues if EV adoption scales as rapidly as is expected.
- Companies are also attacking the opposite end of these issues, attempting to create novel (e.g., seafloor mining), more efficient, and/or safer forms of mining.
But, but, but...For now, it’s still cheaper to make batteries from newly mined materials than recycled ones. Experts expect the economics to change as the Fords of the world begin pumping out EVs, as has happened with the much less valuable lead-acid batteries used in gas-powered cars: 98% of lead-acid batteries are currently recovered or recycled.—DM