Redwood, Rivian Expand Battery Recycling Deal — SkimNews
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- Redwood Materials and Rivian are expanding their existing EV battery partnership to add battery material recycling at Rivian's Normal, Illinois vehicle factory, with the potential to extend to other Rivian-owned sites.
- Under the new deal, Redwood will collect, sort, and recycle Rivian's battery production scrap, reintegrating it into manufacturing 'at a fraction of the cost of virgin material.'
- Retired Rivian battery packs will first be redeployed in stationary energy projects before Redwood recycles approximately 99% of their critical materials — nickel, cobalt, copper, and lithium.
- The expansion builds on an April agreement for 10 MWh of energy storage using repurposed Rivian packs at the R2 production line inside the former Diamond-Star Mitsubishi plant in Normal.
- JB Straubel, Tesla co-founder and Redwood's founder, said every returned Rivian pack is 'a potential source of domestic grid energy storage in addition to critical materials.'
- Rivian joins BMW, Ford, Toyota, and Volvo as the latest major automaker to sign a formal battery recycling partnership with Redwood, with the deal scaling as the recently launched R2 ramps.
Why it matters: With Rivian's higher-volume, more affordable R2 now in production, the scrap-and-second-life pipeline Redwood is building at Normal scales accordingly — each reclaimed pack offsets demand for virgin nickel, cobalt, copper, and lithium. The expansion cements Redwood as the closed-loop partner of choice across at least five major automakers, not just a niche recycler.
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