Redwood Materials Inc, a California-based startup, announced Tuesday that Toyota had joined its EV battery recycling and manufacturing initiative. Redwood Components is developing a closed-loop battery ecosystem with the goal of lowering EV prices by reducing reliance on imported materials while also minimizing environmental effects.
JB Straubel, Redwood Materials’ Chief Executive Officer and Founder said in an interview that the five-year-old company focused its initial work on a 175-acre campus in northern Nevada and aims to create another complex in the southeastern United States.
Toyota’s proposed $1.3 billion battery plant in North Carolina and Ford’s planned battery factories in Tennessee would be supplied by the new facility.
Redwood Materials plans to increase anode and cathode component production to 100 gigawatt-hours by 2025, enough to supply batteries for 1 million electric vehicles per year. By 2030, the company aims for 500 gigawatt-hours, enough to supply 5 million or more EVs per year, according to Straubel.
Straubel, a Co-founder of Tesla and former Chief Technical Officer, said that Redwood Materials is in “various discussions” with the company, but no deals have been announced yet.
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