Volkswagen Partners With Redwood Materials For Battery Recycling In the US

Volkswagen has partnered with Redwood Materials for battery recycling in the US. Redwood Materials is a battery recycling startup that was founded by former Tesla CTO JB Straubel. This deal is for the Volkswagen and Audi brands and is representative of the sustainability commitment the Volkswagen group has made to the US. In the coming years as a group, Volkswagen will introduce 25 electric models by the end of the decade. The plan for Volkswagen in the US is to create a holistic EV supply chain in the US.

This deal includes over 1,000 dealers selling Volkswagen and Audi branded EVs. Redwood Materials will work directly with these dealers and Volkswagen in the US to help identify end-of-life batteries and their materials and then safely package them up before transporting them to its own recycling facilities in Nevada.

“The transition to electric transportation and clean energy is coming and the batteries powering these technologies present an incredible opportunity. As more and more batteries reach end-of-life each year, an increasing and infinitely recyclable resource become available. Redwood and Volkswagen Group of America share a vision to create a domestic, circular supply chain for batteries that will help improve the environmental footprint of lithium-ion batteries, decrease cost and, in turn, increase access and adoption of electric vehicles,” said JB Straubel the founder and CEO of Redwood Materials.

Redwood Materials recycles more than 6GWh of lithium-ion batteries which amount to 60,000 EV batteries each year. It extracts cobalt, copper, nickels and lithium and refines and manufactures them into new battery components before delivering them back to the manufacturers like Panasonic.

Redwood Materials already has deals in place with Nissan and Ford. With Volkswagen, it will help the German giant expedite and implement prototype batteries from the battery engineering lab in Chattanooga.