[Infinite Power] The Business Highlighted by Tesla's Former CTO

[Image source=Reuters Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter So-yeon Park] J.B. Straubel, who served as the first Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of the American electric vehicle company Tesla and is also known as a co-founder, plans to develop 'Redwood Materials,' the company he founded, into the world's leading battery recycling company.

Straubel recently announced at a technology conference that he will pursue this plan in collaboration with Japan's Panasonic and the American e-commerce company Amazon.

Founded in 2017, Redwood plans to receive 1 gigawatt-hour (Wh) worth of scrap materials from Tesla's Gigafactory this year and recycle them.

Straubel is reported to plan to build a circular supply chain by recycling and redistributing materials recovered from discarded electric vehicles and battery cells, thereby reducing the demand for mining raw materials such as nickel, copper, and cobalt used in electric vehicle batteries.

Why did Tesla's former CTO focus on the battery recycling business?

Electric vehicle batteries need to be replaced when their initial capacity decreases to below 70%, as this reduces driving range and slows charging speed. The replacement cycle is approximately 5 to 10 years.

If discarded batteries are left unattended, they become serious waste that causes environmental pollution. However, the industry sees proper recycling of used batteries as a potential new business model.

Fifty percent of a battery's composition consists of cathode and anode active materials. Extracting and recycling remaining materials from used batteries enables stable material supply.

If high-value metals such as cobalt, nickel, and lithium carbonate are extracted from used batteries and a 100% recovery rate is achieved, the value of valuable metals from the battery pack per vehicle is estimated to be about 1 million KRW. This means that 1 trillion KRW of new value could be created from one million electric vehicle batteries.

Expanding the market globally increases the scale even further. According to market research firm MarketsandMarkets, the lithium-ion battery recycling market size is expected to grow about eightfold from $1.5 billion (approximately 1.8 trillion KRW) last year to $12.2 billion (approximately 15 trillion KRW) by 2025.

This is also why domestic companies such as Hyundai Motor Company, SK Innovation, LG Chem, and OCI are paying attention to used battery recycling.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.