Insight
Second-life EV batteries require just one to two years to become profitable
“The life of the second life battery on the grid is, it's certainly long enough to be economically valuable, and that, in order to make economic sense, it's really one or two years, hundreds of cycles, low hundreds of cycles.”
Disclosure
Redwood repurposes retired EV battery packs without opening them or removing modules
“We do a very brief electrical inspection. Something like five minutes, cell balance impedance check, and we literally wheel it out to the field where we have a spot for it and plug it in. So we are not opening up the packs. We are not removing the modules. We …”
Insight
Second-life EV batteries excel in four-to-twenty-hour long-duration grid storage
“We can certainly play in the two hour, four hour markets with repurposed EV packs, second life packs. Where we see them really starting to shine, though, is in the longer duration. Markets. So four hour, eight hour, maybe longer, maybe 20 hour. And that's beca…”
Disclosure
Redwood repurposes 95% of retired EV batteries for grid storage before recycling
“We don't have to choose, right? So we Typically we'll do both. We will send a battery out to a grid scale energy storage site to provide grid services when that is economically sensible, which is 95% of the time, and then we will go on to recover the metals va…”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Redwood Materials collects over 80% of US end-of-life EV battery packs
“We are already collecting north of 80% of the end of life EV packs across the nation.”
Disclosure
Proprietary power electronics allow Redwood Materials to use any battery chemistry
“We're totally agnostic to chemistry type. So because of the power electronics that we've developed, we can really easily integrate low capacity, high capacity, high nickel, LFP new, old, low voltage, high voltage packs, whatever it is we're ready to plug it in…”
Opinion
Repurposing used LFP batteries for grid storage remains economically viable
“The economics are different for LFP, but they still solve. The metals values are lower. The cycle life is different. The degradation is different. The energy value is different, but it still makes sense to deploy them on the grid used LFP packs.”
Prediction Open · timeframe Dec 2026
Redwood Materials expects to deploy gigawatt-hours of repurposed batteries by 2026
“We think we can refurbish and deploy Gigawatt hours. Low single digit gigawatt hours this year, next year.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Redwood Materials finds retired EV batteries typically lose only 20% capacity
“So from a physical perspective they're usually almost new. And then from an electrical and electrochemical perspective we receive them when a customer might get frustrated with them, typically. So that's something like I've lost 20% of my range, or the acceler…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Redwood receives mostly 10-year-old NMC EV batteries for recycling
“Today they're predominantly NMC. You could think of it as what we get is what was built roughly 10 years ago. So we're time shifted from the manufacturing trends.”
Assertion Supported
About 5 GWh of EV battery capacity retires annually in the US
“So today it's on the order of five gigawatt hours a year that's coming off the road.”
Assertion Supported
New US EV production accounts for roughly 150 GWh of batteries annually
“And it's on the order of, ah, a 150 gigawatt hours a year new EV production that's going into service.”
Assertion Supported
EVs consume 80% of battery production, driving future second-life grid supply
“I think it's something like 80% of the energy storage is going into EV. So that's where most of the gigawatt hours are going to come out. Which is really good for grid storage because those are the packs that are going to be easiest to redeploy. Those are the …”
