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not to mention that nearly all the world’s facilities to process those materials are in Asia, meaning they will have travel 10,000 miles before we can use them. To that end, Redwood Materials is building a gargantuan facility outside Reno, which will process new minerals, recycled batteries, and manufacturing scrap into enough copper foil and powdery, mineral-rich cathode active material to build batteries for about 1 million electric cars a year by 2025.
To completely transition the U.S. to electric vehicles, we’ll need about 10 facilities of that size, with mining operations on an unheard-of scale to supply them. But once more old batteries start being retired, Straubel says, his facilities will switch to pure recycling, creating a closed, clean system in which we reuse minerals in one battery generation after another, forever.
The last part might sound like techno-optimist hyperbabble—but it doesn’t feel that way coming from Straubel. For one thing, he’s not blithely optimistic about the current climate situation (“It’s probably going to be a lot worse than most people expect,” he says). For another, his conversation lacks corporatist sheen; he has an anxious energy about him, and when he talks about himself, he almost physically winces.
But when you ask him about an engineering system or a business plan, he’ll seize the question with almost adolescent animation, dive like a marlin, and then resurface after a while with an apologetic smile, asking, with a bit of concern, “Does that make sense?”
I hate electric vehicles. It’s gotten personal.
...which mining operations will be halted forever to protect the delicate habitat of the Nurovian bivalvous twitching caterpillar.