- General
- September 17, 2020
- 4 minutes read
Amazon Backs Redwood Materials
JB Straubel, Founder, Redwood Materials. Photo credit: International Transport Forum, under Creative Commons license E-commerce giant Amazon has invested in…
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| JB Straubel, Founder, Redwood Materials.
Photo credit: International Transport Forum, under Creative Commons license
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E-commerce giant Amazon has invested in Redwood Materials, a battery recycling startup founded by JB Straubel, an automotive engineer who’s best known for co-founding electric carmaker Tesla. Amazon backed the company along with four others as part of the first batch of investments from the e-commerce giant’s $2 billion clean energy fund. The exact size of Amazon’s investment in Redwood isn’t disclosed. Before now, Redwood is known to have raised $2 million in funding.
Redwood Materials is based out of Carson City, Nevada. The company seems to be operating in minimal mode, with its battery recycling work currently under trial. Battery waste poses a significant problem to the widespread use of electric vehicles and other electronics equipment in general. The lithium-ion batteries used to power electric vehicles and other types of batteries used to power electronic equipment tend to build up to hazardous waste piles when not re-used or recycled. It’s such that Redwood Materials is aiming to build what will be the biggest car battery-recycling operation in the U.S. Currently, the company operates out of a warehouse in Nevada where it recycles batteries on a relatively small scale. Redwood Materials is aiming to efficiently recycle electric car batteries on a large scale, a feat that if achieved will not only reduce pollution but potentially reduce the cost of obtaining batteries and, in turn, the cost of electric vehicles.
JB Straubel, a Tesla co-founder and former Chief Technology Officer, founded Redwood Materials in 2017. Redwood isn’t affiliated with Tesla but has, however, managed to court Panasonic, one of the electric carmaker’s major battery manufacturing partners. Panasonic last year kicked off a trial to reclaim up to 2 tons of battery scrap that it generates. It’s such that all of the battery scraps from Panasonic’s major battery facility in Nevada is now shipped to Redwood for recycling purposes.
As of summer this year, Redwood Materials had a small team of 50 people. The company plans to boost that number to 200 by the end of this year.
