- GM and Redwood Supplies are teaming as much as give outdated batteries a brand new life.
- Underneath the brand new settlement between the 2 corporations, Redwood will assist recycle GM-supplied battery packs into power storage gadgets.
- This offers scalable, cost-effective power storage whereas additionally decreasing waste produced by outdated or totaled EVs.
Ever surprise what occurs to an EV battery pack when the automobile dies? I might prefer to assume it goes to battery heaven—in spite of everything, I hear canine have their very own model. However the actuality is a little more grim in the intervening time, with any variety of potentialities from ending up in a landfill to being recycled right into a slurry of processed minerals referred to as a black mass. Fortunately, Normal Motors and Redwood Supplies have a plan: give these cells a second life powering actually something and every little thing else.
The duo introduced a brand new partnership on Wednesday that might breathe new life into outdated EV batteries. Basically, the pair would work collectively to feed Redwood a gentle stream of “retired” battery packs for repurposing to maintain EVs from turning into the following large contributor to the e-waste disaster.
You in all probability know GM already, however not everybody has heard of Redwood. For many who have not, you’ve got in all probability a minimum of heard of Tesla. JB Straubel, the CEO and founding father of Redwood Supplies, was former CTO of Tesla (and likewise its fifth ever worker). Straubel’s goal in founding Redwood was to create a closed-loop within the battery provide chain, permitting automakers (and different corporations that want power storage) to make the most of the vital supplies which have already been harvested for his or her vehicles. Redwood launched Redwood Vitality in June, which expands on the corporate’s authentic goal with a purpose to deploy EV battery packs—each new and recycled ones—into modules for low-cost power storage methods.
GM would possibly provide Redwood with a brand new battery pack, positive. However it’s additionally planning on dropping loads of outdated packs on the corporate’s doorstep, too.
See, EV batteries might be retired for quite a few causes. They may have a foul cell, or possibly they’ve dipped under the optimum roadworthy vary of 70-80% capability. That is not to say that these batteries nonetheless do not maintain a ton of juice, so grinding them up into a rough powder or dumping them in a junkyard is mainly like throwing away money.
Redwood additionally occurs to have a community of sources to get these packs along with immediately from GM. It may be despatched to the corporate immediately from a dealership as a recycled pack, or it might be reclaimed from an automotive dismantler. There’s additionally the complicated internet of nationwide assortment and logistic providers that supply these packs for Redwood since EVs all finish their serviceable lives in several methods.
Photograph by: InsideEVs
This partnership does two issues that GM—and, let’s be actual, all the auto business—wants proper now:
First, it helps GM look eco-smart in entrance of all its friends and EV nay-sayers. Second, it helps cope with the upcoming tidal wave of first-generation EV batteries that may quickly begin coming again to automakers as tech improves and folk begin turning of their outdated Chevy Bolts and Teslas for brand new BEVs with gobs of vary.
And to actually hammer residence Redwood’s mission, many of those batteries will have the ability to be reused earlier than they have to be recycled. The truth is, batteries from GM’s partnership with Redwood are already powering a 63 megawatt-hour battery microgrid in Sparks, Nevada—that is the most important microgrid in all of North America. It is getting used to assist an AI infrastructure firm serving to to Again Openai.
“Electrical energy demand is accelerating at an unprecedented tempo, pushed by AI and the fast electrification of every little thing from transportation to business,” mentioned Straubel in GM’s press launch. “Each GM’s second-life EV batteries and new batteries could be deployed in Redwood’s power storage methods, delivering quick, versatile energy options and strengthening America’s power and manufacturing independence.”
When you consider it Redwood is actually serving to to create one other home battery ecosystem that is sustainable and much less depending on mining new minerals. Meaning much less fear about how these supplies had been sourced and making certain that they are obtained ethically. It additionally offers the chance for cheaper merchandise throughout by reusing batteries earlier than having to re-process them utilizing energy-intensive hydrometallurgy and pyrometallurgy recycling strategies.
So the following time that somebody tells you that EVs are wasteful as a result of the batteries simply get thrown out, simply smile and nod whereas imagining an enormous pile of GM-branded battery packs buzzing away in a substation someplace stopping the grid collapse. Generally even the long run is constructed from outdated components.
