Redwood Materials has attained a $2 billion loan commitment from the Department of Energy. The battery-recycling startup will use the funding to build and expand its battery recycling facility outside of Reno, Nevada. The facility takes end-of-life electric vehicle batteries and automotive production scrap, processes these, and churns out raw materials and products that are used to make new EV battery cells, namely anode copper foil and cathode-active materials.
“These are very capital-intensive projects, and we’re in a competition with Asia to ramp this up and to bring these supply chains and manufacturing operations back to the US,” said Straubel on CNBC’s The Exchange on Thursday. He added, “The US battery demand and EV demand is growing…but we have a long way before that supply chain is predominantly moved to the US.”