Ford is partnering with battery recycling start-up Redwood Supplies to reuse the uncooked supplies from EV battery packs.
The settlement, which can start initially with recycling scrap materials from battery manufacturing, is the newest indication automakers are taking steps to deal with the availability and price of uncooked supplies wanted to fabricate batteries for electrical autos.
“It can assist us cut back the reliance on importing plenty of the supplies that we use in the present day after we construct the batteries, after which it’s going to cut back the mining of uncooked supplies, which goes to be extremely vital sooner or later as we begin to scale,” mentioned Lisa Drake, Ford’s chief working officer. “Creating this home provide chain can be a main step in the direction of making electrical autos extra reasonably priced and extra accessible to everybody.”
With EV gross sales within the U.S. anticipated to leap from an estimated 350,000 autos in 2021 to greater than one million yearly by 2025, in response to the analysis agency LMC Automotive, automakers are more and more targeted on the life cycle of EV batteries.
Tesla, which recycles batteries from its autos, addresses the difficulty on its web site saying, “none of our scrapped lithium-ion batteries go to landfilling, and 100% are recycled.” GM is working with Canada primarily based Li-Cycle to recycle scrap materials from the manufacturing of Ultium battery cells.
Ford’s cope with Redwood Supplies may benefit each firms because the variety of EVs continues to develop. Ford and its battery manufacturing associate SK Improvements will safe a gradual, and probably rising, provide of key supplies akin to lithium, nickel and copper essential to manufacturing EV battery packs. Redwood Supplies will obtain battery packs that will likely be recycled, with the important thing components then shipped again to Ford to be reused in future EVs.
“We’re constructing and deploying round slightly greater than 2.000 batteries onto the roads in America, each single day,” mentioned JB Straubel, founder and CEO of Redwood Supplies. “We have to a minimum of be planning to determine how we will very effectively and sustainably recycle and disassemble an analogous variety of batteries.”
Initially, Redwood will likely be recycling scrap materials it receives from Ford at its amenities in Carson Metropolis, Nevada. Over time, as Ford and SK Innovation add crops, it’s doable Redwood Supplies will construct new recycling facilities nearer to the battery manufacturing crops.
On paper, Ford’s battery recycling plan is sensible. However ensuring there’s a steady loop would require Ford to trace what occurs to its EVs lengthy after they’ve been offered. A tall job since autos sometimes have two or three house owners earlier than they hit the tip of their life, and when that occurs the EV is prone to find yourself at a scrap yard. The reply may very well be requiring automakers to trace EV batteries.
“It is undoubtedly doable for the automaker to shepherd that battery via its lifetime, and get it to the recycling middle,” mentioned Sam Jaffe, managing director of Cairn Power Analysis Advisors.
Jaffe, who tracks the EV battery market, says recycling is taking maintain in Europe as a result of automakers have a authorized obligation to ensure the battery will likely be recycled. “The batteries get to the scrap yards, the automaker will choose them up and produce them in to centralize them after which ship them to recycling,” he mentioned. The push to extend recycling within the EU is one cause Volkswagen and Peugeot have rolled out small recycling operations on the continent.
For now, Ford has not established a definitive plan for ensuring battery packs on the finish of their lives are recycled, however Drake admits the monetary advantage of recycling batteries is substantial. ”If we will recapture that worth and never should mine once more and have some home provide safety, that is extremely helpful for us,” she mentioned throughout a briefing asserting the partnership.
EV battery recycling has not acquired extra consideration in the USA largely as a result of the variety of electrical autos reaching the tip of their lives stays comparatively small. That may change over the following 10 years because the business ramps up EV manufacturing.
AlixPartners, an auto business consulting agency, says investments in battery manufacturing will make up virtually 1 / 4 of the $330 billion being spent to develop and construct electrical autos from 2021 via 2025. Ford has dedicated to spend $22 billion via 2025 creating EVs, together with the F-150 Lightning. First deliveries of the all-electric pickup truck are scheduled for early subsequent yr.
Ford is amongst a number of firms which have invested in Redwood Supplies, which has raised extra $800 million over three rounds of funding. Straubel says demand for uncooked supplies will proceed to develop, so recycling as a substitute of mining will change into a sensible transfer for automakers.
“It could alleviate the necessity for importing extra of those supplies from abroad and might alleviate the necessity and the strain on ramping up mining,” he mentioned.
— CNBC’s Meghan Reeder contributed to this report