The American company Redwood Materials announces that it is capable of recycling batteries at 95%, thus surpassing Tesla, which currently limits it to 92%. Led by one of the founders of the brand, Elon Musk, the company specialized in cell enhancement takes stock of its program launched a year earlier.
For years, critics of the electric car have argued that it is difficult battery recycling as an argument against this motorization. If it is true that it is not exempt from defects, as we explained in a previous article, it remains cleaner overall than thermal vehicles. especially in the battery recovery solutions now they are more numerous.
optimal recycling
For many years, manufacturers have been racking their brains to find ways to recycle the batteries in their electric cars. The status of these depends on their capacity, expressed as a percentage. If it is above 80%, it can then be reconditioned and used in another vehicle. Otherwise, it is dismantled and used for other uses.
This is exactly what Redwood Materials is working on. It is an American company created in 2017 by JB Straubel, one of the co-founders of Tesla and who has worked for the manufacturer for 16 years, now led by Elon Musk. the signature is specialized in recycling batteries of electric cars and launched a year ago an extensive experimental program aimed at improving the revaluation of these containers.
On its site, the company is announcing the results of this experiment today, and they are quite encouraging. She explains that she succeeded in recover no less than 1,268 batteries at the end of their useful life, coming from 19 models of electric and hybrid cars, working hand in hand with dealers or salvage yards in California. Among all these packages, less than 5% were “ damaged, defective or recalled“, and therefore unusable.
These accumulators are a mixture ofancient NiMH chemistry (nickel-metal hydride), especially used in Toyota Prius and other Honda Civic hybrids, as well as newer lithium-ion technologies. This is the case with NMC (nickel-manganese-cobalt) or LFP (lithium-iron-phosphate) batteries. The proportion of recycled batteries should then increase considerably, since it is currently the most used solution, pending the development of alternatives to sodium or solids.
A new life
Lithium batteries already represent 82% of packages recovered by Redwood be transformed Thus, the company claims to be able to upgrade batteries to 95%, surpassing Tesla. In a report dating from 2021, the US firm claimed to be able to recycle up to 92% of the materials. Which is already excellent. For its part, Volkswagen wants to go further and has launched a project to recycle batteries almost infinitely in the future.
But then, what is the destination of these packets once recovered? At Redwood Materials these are disassembled and the materials are used to manufacture new components for other batteriesas cathodes or anodes. A gesture for the environment, but not only. In fact, the government now reserves the granting of its electric car tax credit only to those that are made in the United States and whose battery is also sourced locally. Which may therefore be the case with this solution.
Thus, customers will pay less for their electric car thanks to this innovation, which allows reduce dependence on China. However, this technique is still very expensive, mainly due to logistics. To recycle batteries on a large scale, you have to collect them everywhere and transport them. However, solutions are possible. as the volume of collection increaseswhich allows to reduce logistics costs and make them profitable.
Some manufacturers are working on other solutions, such as Suzuki, which announced in May 2025 the development of a technology that uses its car batteries to power public lighting in Japan. An alternative also implemented by Nissan, which had done the same with a Leaf accumulator in 2018.
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