Toyota, Redwood Partner to Repurpose EV Batteries in Closed-Loop Ecosystem

PLANO, Texas and CARSON CITY, Nev. — Toyota became the latest auto giant to join Redwood Materials’ comprehensive EV battery full lifecycle initiative today in an effort for the automaker to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.

Redwood, a Nevada-based sustainable energy storage company founded in 2017 by former Tesla executive J. B. Straubel, already works with Ford Motor Company and EV battery maker Panasonic on its closed-loop ecosystem.

Redwood’s collaboration with Toyota will focus primarily on battery collection, testing and evaluation, and recycling to start, with an eventual shift to battery material production as well as remanufacturing and repurposing Toyota hybrid vehicle batteries to develop what Toyota called in a press release “second-life opportunities.”

“We are committed to developing sustainable solutions that allow our batteries to provide value beyond the initial lifecycle in an electrified vehicle,” Christopher Yang, group vice president of business development at Toyota said, adding that efforts both to recycle and repurpose raw materials contribute to the automaker’s carbon neutrality goals.

“We’re very excited to be jumping in to recycle those old hybrid electric vehicle batteries,” Straubel told CNBC’s Phil LeBeau.

“There were millions of hybrid Priuses and other vehicles sold over the last 10-15 years, and a lot of those are some of the oldest electrified vehicles on the road.

“We’re able to actually take the nickel and other valuable elements from those batteries and sort of make it into a new chemistry — into something relevant for lithium-ion batteries today,” he said.

Evaluations from the new Toyota collaboration will result in enhanced battery health screening and data management programs as well as remanufacturing and battery material supply.

Redwood claims that prior to inking its deal with Toyota, it receives more than ~6 GWh of end-of-life batteries annually for recycling which it refines and remanufactures into those critical battery materials. 

The company wants to eventually supply enough cathodes and anodes to equip 1 million vehicles after 2025.

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