Panasonic will produce battery cells for Tesla from recycled materials

2021: Recycled Materials Use Plan

On January 12, 2022, it became known that the company, Panasonic the main supplier of batteries for, electric vehicles Tesla plans to use the recycled materials provided startup Redwood Materials for the production of new lithium-ion accumulators cells in a "closed" production cycle. Already in 2022, Redwood Materials, founded by former technical director Tesla Jeffrey Strobel and specializing in recycling, accumulators will begin to supply restored copper foil for new lithium-ion elements to the Gigafactory factory in Nevada.

Panasonic produces about 2 billion battery cells a year at the Gigafabrik. According to Alan Swan, president of Panasonic Energy North America, the company expects fivefold growth in the next ten years as more and more cars switch to electric engines.

We plan to use Redwood copper foil from recycled materials in the production of our new batteries by the end of 2022, "said Alan Swan.

The use of reconstituted copper foil will be the first closed-loop production process involving the processing of old batteries, the production of useful materials and their subsequent return to the same plant. Thus, copper foil will be used in the new Panasonic batteries, which will eventually fall into Tesla electric vehicles.

The recycling supplier, Redwood Materials, is based near Gigafactory, in Carson City, Nevada. While working at Tesla, its founder Jeffrey Strobel played an important role in developing engines for the automaker, and also helped create and launch Gigafactor itself, a large battery factory in the United States. In 2019, he left the company to establish a startup for processing used batteries.

Redwood Materials has already raised about $800 million to expand its business. As demand for batteries for electric vehicles and the expensive components necessary for their production is constantly growing, in September 2021 the company shared plans to invest more than $1 billion by 2025 in the construction of a large plant in the United States that will produce materials for batteries for electric vehicles.