Toyota plans to recycle old car batteries to make new ones, will work with Tesla co-founder

On June 22, according to Sina Finance, Toyota is collaborating with Redwood Materials, a battery recycling company led by Tesla co-founder JB Straubel, on a car battery recycling project.The partnership's plan is to refurbish or disassemble old batteries and use their materials to make new ones.

The battery recycling company plans to produce the two main components of batteries - anode and cathode materials.The company's ultimate goal is to create a " closed-loop supply chain forelectric vehicles," meaning it will take batteries from old electric cars and turn them into batteries for new cars.

Toyota is currently rolling out its first long-range electric vehicle, and since their batteries are still relatively new, new vehicles are not the focus of the current partnership.Instead, Toyota and Redwood are more inclined to work with the "first wave of battery electric vehicles," the 20-year-old first-generation Prius that will soon be scrapped.In the future, Redwood said it hopes to have some operations near "Toyota's recently announced North American battery plant" on the east coast.

It's worth noting that Redwood's technology and methods for recycling car batteries have not been experimentally proven.The company just launched plans in February to work with Ford and Volvo on end-of-life electric vehicles.While the company has been planning to process car batteries for some time, its ability to process batteries at scale has not been formally tested.

The company says it receives about 6GWh worth of cells each year for recycling, and hopes to produce 100GWh worth of modules by 2025 and five times that value by 2030.