Exclusive: Rivian and Redwood Materials are planning to collaborate further on battery recycling and energy storage.
Photo: Jeffery Loewe/Redwood Materials
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Rivian is finding new uses for its end-of-life EV batteries through an expanded partnership with battery circularity company Redwood Materials.
The announcement builds on an existing deal the two companies struck in April to build out a 10-megawatt-hour energy storage micro-grid project at Rivian’s Normal, Illinois production facilities, and comes at a time when U.S. power demand is poised to hit record highs amid AI growth. Now, Rivian can also sell its end-of-life batteries to Redwood for recycling or a variety of uses, including other energy storage and grid resilience projects.
“This is what circularity looks like in practice,” says Chris Brown, director of product sustainability at Rivian. “This is keeping batteries working for as long as we can, using them in the right applications for a second life, recovering materials at the end of life and keeping those materials in the domestic economy.”
The expanded partnership creates two additional pathways for multiple types and chemistries of Rivian’s end-of-life EV batteries, according to Andrew Peterman, director of advanced energy solutions at Rivian. Rivian will provide battery packs and materials, like scrap, to be recycled by Redwood, or they can be used in second-life energy-storage projects.
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“Every Rivian battery pack that comes back to us is a potential source of domestic grid energy storage in addition to critical materials,” JB Straubel, Redwood Materials’ founder and CEO, said in a statement.
Per the agreement, Rivian can be compensated for the remaining value of the mineral content recovered from a battery in the case of recycling or its value in a second-life energy storage solution—which is the option Rivian would prefer.
“We are sitting on this domestic resource that can be enabled and deployed to help solve the efficiency crisis we see with our grid,” Peterman says. “After seven, eight years of operation, the life of the EV battery doesn’t end there, and can continue to support the grid in this second life application, and much more cost effectively, and much more quickly than building packs from virgin materials.”