Redwood Materials and Rivian are expanding their existing EV battery partnership, adding a fresh battery material recycling effort to the EV startup’s Normal, Illinois, vehicle factory and, potentially, other Rivian-owned sites.

As Tesla co-founder JB Straubel’s second act, Redwood Materials had a lot to live up to. Its plan to give used EV batteries a second life as energy storage for public- and private-sector buildings, construction sites, micro-grids, and (sigh) data centers makes plenty of sense, though. Enough sense, anyway, that Rivian decided to put the idea to work as it built out its R2 production line at the former Diamond-Star Mitsubishi plant in Normal. Back in April, the upstart EV brand signed on for 10 MWh worth of energy storage using repurposed Rivian battery packs – but that deal was just the beginning.

The new, expanded partnership between the two companies will see Redwood collect, sort, and recycle Rivian’s battery production scrap materials, putting them safely back into the manufacturing process with minimal waste and at a fraction of the cost of virgin material. What’s more, the new deal will see retired Rivian batteries put to use in other stationary energy projects before eventually recycling some 99% of those batteries’ critical materials (nickel, cobalt, copper, and lithium).

With the recent launch of what is sure to be the more popular, more affordable R2, that’s suddenly a much bigger deal than it might have been last year.

“Every Rivian battery pack that comes back to us is a potential source of domestic grid energy storage in addition to critical materials,” explains Straubel.

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