The electric vehicle era, barely underway, could soon be stifled by a shortage of batteries and raw materials that will require significant investments in US manufacturing, mining and recycling.
Why it matters: President-elect Joe Biden has made vehicle electrification a core element of his energy and economic policy. But the US is far behind in the global battery race, creating a potential supply chain bottleneck that could slow EV adoption for the next decade.
What’s happening: Tesla’s former battery chief, JB Straubel, who has seen the issue developing for years, envisions a long-term solution that would produce EV batteries from recycled lithium, nickel and cobalt salvaged from other cars, not mined from the earth.
- His new startup, Redwood Materials, is developing a closed-loop battery supply chain that he says would lead to cheaper electric vehicles — without harming the environment.
- The US has plenty of lithium, he noted in an interview with Axios, but pulling it from the earth is expensive and difficult — defeating the thesis behind affordable EVs.
- Recycling, he said, “is staring us right in the face as the obvious answer to this,” says Straubel. In a closed-loop system, mines won’t be needed, he says.
The catch: There aren’t enough used EVs hitting the junkyard yet. So for now, Redwood is perfecting its processes using batteries stripped from consumer electronics as well as scrapped battery materials from Panasonic, Tesla’s joint venture partner in its Nevada gigafactory.