Redwood Materials, Inc. is an American company headquartered in

Carson City Carson City is an Independent city (United States), independent city and the capital of the U.S. state of Nevada. As of the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census, the population was 58,639, making it the List of cities in Nevada, sixth largest ...

Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, Western region of the United States. It is bordered by Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. N ...

. The company aims to recycle

lithium-ion batteries A lithium-ion or Li-ion battery is a type of rechargeable battery which uses the reversible reduction of lithium ions to store energy. It is the predominant battery type used in portable consumer electronics and electric vehicles. It also se ...

and produce battery materials for

electromobility An electric vehicle (EV) is a vehicle that uses one or more electric motors for propulsion. It can be powered by a collector system, with electricity from extravehicular sources, or it can be powered autonomously by a battery (sometimes cha ...

and electrical storage systems. Redwood Materials was reported to have a valuation of about $3.7 billion as of July 2021.

History

Redwood Materials was founded by

J. B. Straubel Jeffrey Brian ("JB") Straubel (born December 20, 1975) is an American businessman. He spent 15 years at Tesla, as chief technical officer until moving to an advisory role in July 2019. In 2017, Straubel founded and became the CEO of Redwood M ...

, who was a co-founder and served as chief technology officer at

Tesla, Inc. Tesla, Inc. ( or ) is an American multinational automotive and clean energy company headquartered in Austin, Texas. Tesla designs and manufactures electric vehicles (electric cars and trucks), battery energy storage from home to grid- ...

for 16 years. Redwood set out to create a circular supply chain for electric vehicles and clean energy products, making them more sustainable long term and driving down the cost for batteries by developing a fully closed loop for lithium-ion batteries. Redwood sought to recycle batteries, recapturing valuable materials to help make new batteries. On its website in 2022 Redwood Materials explained that the company received enough end-of-life batteries annually to provide critical materials for new batteries for about 60,000 new electric vehicles. Redwood estimated that it was recovering more than 95% of the metals (including

nickel Nickel is a chemical element with symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel is a hard and ductile transition metal. Pure nickel is chemically reactive but large pieces are slow to ...

cobalt Cobalt is a chemical element with the symbol Co and atomic number 27. As with nickel, cobalt is found in the Earth's crust only in a chemically combined form, save for small deposits found in alloys of natural meteoric iron. The free element, pr ...

lithium Lithium (from el, λίθος, lithos, lit=stone) is a chemical element with the symbol Li and atomic number 3. It is a soft, silvery-white alkali metal. Under standard conditions, it is the least dense metal and the least dense solid el ...

, and

copper Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkis ...

) from end-of-life batteries. Redwood then produces strategic battery materials, supplying battery manufacturing partners with anode copper foil and cathode active materials. Redwood is partnered with companies such as

Panasonic formerly between 1935 and 2008 and the first incarnation of between 2008 and 2022, is a major Japanese multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation, headquartered in Kadoma, Osaka, Kadoma, Osaka P ...

Ford Motor Company Ford Motor Company (commonly known as Ford) is an American multinational automobile manufacturer headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan, United States. It was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. The company sells automobi ...

, and

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology c ...

. Along with Ford and

Volvo The Volvo Group ( sv, Volvokoncernen; legally Aktiebolaget Volvo, shortened to AB Volvo, stylized as VOLVO) is a Swedish multinational manufacturing corporation headquartered in Gothenburg. While its core activity is the production, distributio ...

, Redwood Materials launched a used battery collection program for the state of

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

in February of 2022. Ford, Volvo and their dealers planned to work with battery dismantlers and ship old vehicle batteries to Redwood Material's plant in Carson City, Nevada. In 2021, the company announced it had received US$775M from various investors in a financing round. This will be used to build a production facility that will produce battery materials from recycled materials, starting at 6 GWh per year. By 2025, the capacity of the production facilities is to be expanded to 100

GWh A kilowatt-hour (unit symbol: kW⋅h or kW h; commonly written as kWh) is a unit of energy: one kilowatt of power for one hour. In terms of SI derived units with special names, it equals 3.6 megajoules (MJ). Kilowatt-hours are a common bil ...

, enough for one million electric vehicles. By 2030, capacity is expected to increase to 500 GWh.

Investors

Investors in Redwood Materials' $775M Series C include

T. Rowe Price T. Rowe Price Group, Inc. is an American publicly owned global investment management firm that offers funds, subadvisory services, separate account management, and retirement plans and services for individuals, institutions, and financial inter ...

Goldman Sachs Goldman Sachs () is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company. Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is headquartered at 200 West Street in Lower Manhattan, with regional headquarters in London, Warsaw, Bangalore, H ...

Baillie Gifford Baillie Gifford is an investment management firm which is wholly owned by partners, all of whom work within the firm. It was founded in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1908 and still has its headquarters in the city. It has corporate offices in New York ...

Fidelity Fidelity is the quality of faithfulness or loyalty. Its original meaning regarded duty in a broader sense than the related concept of ''fealty''. Both derive from the Latin word ''fidēlis'', meaning "faithful or loyal". In the City of London f ...

and Amazon's

Climate Pledge Fund The Climate Pledge Fund is a division of Amazon, set up to develop and manage investments in the climate technology space, as part of its Climate Pledge initiative. It is a corporate venture capital fund. History The Climate Pledge Fund makes ...

References

{{reflist Companies established in 2017 Companies based in Carson City, Nevada Battery recycling Waste management companies of the United States