Redwood Materials To Supply Cathodes For Panasonic’s Kansas EV Battery Plant

Redwood Materials, a battery recycling and components company started by Tesla cofounder JB Straubel, says it will make cathodes for Panasonic’s new battery plant in Kansas in a deal worth billions of dollars. It may also be the first large-scale effort to produce that essential component in the U.S. as the Biden Administration pushes for a domestic supply base for batteries and electric vehicles.

Closely held Redwood, which is building a $3.5 billion plant near its Carson City, Nevada, headquarters to make anode materials and cathodes for EV batteries, says it plans to start shipping cathodes made with some recycled material to Panasonic’s DeSoto, Kansas, plant in 2025. Straubel declined to say how much material it will provide to Panasonic annually but told Forbes “the value of this contract is in the multiple billions of dollars.” Equally important is that it’s a step toward cutting U.S. reliance on cathodes and anodes that are currently mainly sourced from China.

“The cathode material is roughly 15% of the cost of an EV. It’s a phenomenally impactful component that isn’t very well understood. Overall, the battery supply chain accounts for maybe 20% to 25% of the cost of an EV,” Straubel said. “This is a really meaningful and monetarily significant step toward launching this industry in the U.S.”

The recently enacted Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, signed into law in August, provides new federal incentives for the purchase of electric cars and trucks of up to $7,500 but specifies that both vehicles and their batteries, including the cathodes and anodes, increasingly must be produced or processed in North America. Though Tesla, General Motors, Panasonic and other companies make batteries at North American plants, China is the main supplier of the cathodes and anodes that make them work.

“In 2029, 100% of the battery components need to be produced in North America to satisfy the IRA requirement,” S&P Global Mobility said in a recent report. However, given the current lack of production in the region, “only 3% of vehicles are expected to use locally produced anode active material.”

Redwood previously said it would make copper foil for anodes Panasonic will also be using in Kansas. Straubel’s company plans to begin making cathodes in Nevada in 2024, with a goal of producing enough of both components for 1 million EV battery packs (100-gigawatt hours) by 2025. By the end of the decade, Redwood’s goal is to boost anode and cathode production to 500 gigawatt-hours per year, enough for at least 5 million EVs.

When Redwood came out of stealth, its initial focus was on collecting massive amounts of used batteries and electronics to extract and reuse lithium, cobalt, nickel and other high-value metals. Now its focus is to expand that business and use those recycled materials to make new battery components, as well as purchasing some minerals from metals suppliers.

Straubel, who worked to create Tesla’s first battery packs and motors as its CTO, oversaw the development of the EV company’s Gigafactory in Sparks, Nevada, the largest U.S. battery plant. He left Tesla in July 2019 to focus on battery recycling at Redwood. The company has since raised more than $1 billion from investors including Ford, Fidelity, Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund and generates an undisclosed amount of revenue from sales of recycled commodity metals.

Redwood could eventually go public, but there’s no plan to do so currently, said Straubel. He declined to say how big a stake he owns in the private firm.