Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos (Jeff? In a statement about the five funded companies, Bezos said that companies like Redwood are "guiding their entrepreneurial energy to help Amazon and other companies achieve zero net emissions by 2040 and keep the planet safer for future generations." Amazon seems to be interested in Redwood's recycling technology, which allows materials such as lithium, cobalt and nickel to be extracted from old smartphones and other consumer devices.
Redwood was founded by Tesla's former chief technology officer on 20 17, because he saw that the global shift to electric vehicles was likely to cause unnecessary environmental damage due to the surge of mining industry. However, this will only happen if there is no recycling system, so that electric vehicle manufacturers can reuse the materials that have been used in automobile batteries. In a conversation with the Financial Times, Straubel shared his vision for the transportation industry, which involves the large-scale application of electric vehicles and the closed-loop battery recycling system.
"My vision is that all the traffic in the world will be completed by electric vehicles, and our batteries will provide power for a sustainable world. And all these batteries can be recycled and remanufactured many times, so that we can have a nearly closed-loop cycle. " Straubel said.
The former Tesla chief technology officer said that this concept also applies to the field of consumer electronics. Straubel said that although the battery will inevitably deteriorate after repeated use, the basic elements that make up the battery are still sealed and not affected by the environment. This means that the materials of batteries (most of which are very valuable materials) can be decomposed and reused. If this is achieved, the former Tesla executive believes that mining is not so necessary.
"At present, a large number of mobile phones in the world are discarded as garbage or thrown into garbage dumps. This is a huge undeveloped resource. If we can recycle 98% or 99% of the materials and reuse them, we don't need too many new materials to keep the whole process running ..... Even if the inside of the battery deteriorates, all the same materials still exist-all the same lithium, nickel and cobalt atoms. You can still use all these same materials, but you need to reprocess them so that they can be reused and made into new batteries, "Straubel said.
Sequoia? Neither company disclosed the specific amount of funds Material received from Amazon, but the former Tesla executive pointed out that there is a possibility between the recycling startup and the e-commerce giant. "Building partnerships at many different levels". One aspect may include assisting Amazon to establish and formulate the scrapping process of consumer electronic products sold through its e-commerce platform, so that these devices and their components can be reused.
Sequoia? Since its establishment, Material has been in stealth mode for most of the time, but there are signs that the company may be part of Tesla's development of its own battery recycling process. One of them involves an existing cooperation with Panasonic to recycle the waste generated by the batteries currently produced by Tesla in Gigafactory, Nevada. The report pointed out that Panasonic initially started trial operation with Redwood, from Giga? Nevada recycled more than 400 pounds of waste, and the result was very successful. The Japanese company soon increased the contract to 2 tons.
This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.