Here’s what Redwood learned in its first year of EV battery recycling

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In February 2022, Redwood Materials began a pilot program in California to recycle electric vehicle batteries. The startup partnered with the state government as well as Ford, Volvo, Volkswagen, and Toyota, plus the car dismantling industry, in order to source end-of-life lithium-ion and nickel metal hydride traction batteries. Now, a year in, it has shared some findings from those first 12 months.

In total, Redwood recovered 1,268 battery packs, amounting to more than 500,000 lbs (226,796 kg). The vast majority of these were from cars that had reached the end of their particular road—Redwood says that less than 5 percent were "damaged, defective, or recalled."

Those packs came from 19 different EV and hybrid models, and the vast majority—82 percent in total—was lithium-ion, with the remaining 18 percent NiMH cells. Redwood says it was able to recover 95 percent of the lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper, and other metals from these packs. And as we noted last month, the company is already producing production-grade copper anode foil.

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