Umicore is one of the world's major exotic metals recyclers.
From TechCrunch,
Ford Motor has tapped Redwood Materials to create a closed loop system for its upcoming deluge of electric vehicles — a partnership that will cover recycling production scrap and EVs at the end of their life as well as supplying the automaker with raw battery materials.
The deal comes as Ford adds more electric vehicles to its portfolio, including the Mustang Mach E that launched last year and the upcoming F-150 Lightning pickup truck. Securing a supply of batteries — or the materials to make them — has prompted the automotive industry to partner with cell manufacturers and increasingly turn to companies like Redwood Materials.
Ford alone will require a hefty supply. The company’s global plans for battery electric vehicle calls for at least 240 gigawatt hours of battery cell capacity by 2030, according to the automaker. That is roughly 10 plants’ worth of capacity. Ford has previously said that 140 GWh will be required in North America, with the balance dedicated to other regions, including Europe and China.
“Closing the loop for us in our end-of-life products and allowing those to re enter the supply chain will help us drive down costs,” Lisa Drake, Ford’s chief operating officer in North America, said during a press briefing. “Of course, it’ll help us reduce the reliance on importing a lot of the materials that we use today when we build the batteries. And then it’ll reduce the mining of raw materials, which is going to be incredibly important in the future as we start to scale on this space.”
All of this, Drake says, will made EVs cheaper and more sustainable.
Redwood Materials recycles scrap from battery cell production and consumer electronics like cell phone batteries, laptop computers, power tools, power banks, scooters and electric bicycles. The company, which was founded and is led by former Tesla CTO JB Straubel....
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Straubel was more than just Chief Technical Officer at Tesla. He was part of the company's founding team and more than anyone got the batteries and gigafactory into mass production
