The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 16 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Steingart: Redwood, Ascend, and Li-Cycle rely on scrap exceeding 20%
“Currently, all three of these companies are living off of gigafactory scrap, which is exceptionally high, over, over 20%, as I understand it.”
Steingart: Battery recyclers will face a lean period as scrap rates drop
“I worry about the business case here because the gigafactories have every incentive in the world to minimize this amount of scrap, and so at the same time, we don't want batteries to die, so every recycler is going to have a lean period as scrap rates go down.…”
Steingart: Direct recycling is likely the only viable path for LFP batteries
“I think if LFP recycling is going to have a shot, it's going to be on a direct recycling route, and for those that know me and get a beer with me after conferences, they're probably doing a spit take, because I'm pretty skeptical of direct recycling in a lot o…”
Steingart: 5-minute charging batteries with zero explosion risk are likely impossible
“So the question is, is how do we have a battery that it gets us a 300 mile range that can be charged in five minutes that has zero danger of exploding, right? And that's probably Impossible, completely, but understanding how and why they explode is something r…”
Steingart: Grading spent EV battery cells for second-life applications is not bankable
“It's typically pretty, pretty difficult to justify the cost of grading these cells and estimating their second life. We do a fair bit of that in my lab, and I have to say to date, I think that, that it's probably not a bankable effort yet. I'm not sure that ev…”
Steingart: Battery recycling is a tolling operation without supply ownership
“I think the brutal truth is, is that it's a cost center, and that inputs, recycled inputs, are ultimately a tolling operation unless Redwood can pull off owning the supply. Because if Redwood can pull off owning the supply, then it owns the mine of the future,…”
Steingart: Graphite battery recycling is hard to justify economically and technically
“Long story short, graphite recycling is in its infancy, and it's pretty difficult to justify from a purity and homogeneity basis, and, you know, frankly, there, there's plenty of graphite in the ground, so, so it's hard to justify from an economic basis recycl…”
Steingart: Mining Giants Lack Economic Incentive to Scale Battery Recycling
“So, in terms of their unit economics, it doesn't make any sense For a mining company to involve itself in recycling in a big way in twenty-twenty-four, both because all of the recycling material coming in, or most of it is, is scrap, and, ah, what's not scrap …”
Steingart: Battery Recycling Margin Gains Will Be Quickly Eroded by Price Competition
“So, so, in a perfectly efficient market, recycling is just a tolling operation, where it is, will exist to an extent that it can keep its costs neutral, and every time there's an advance that lowers the cost of recycling, there will be a year or two where that…”
Steingart: Pyrometallurgy is cheaper and more reliable than hydrometallurgy
“They are but they give you a guaranteed result, and it is generally cheaper than the cousin that, that I like more, which is hydrometallurgy.”
Steingart: Pyrometallurgy represents majority of battery recycling in China
“In my experience, or at least in my conversations with Chinese recyclers in, in China, where there are fewer local restrictions on having pyro in certain provinces. Pyro is, as I understand it now the majority of recycling methods.”
Steingart: Li-Cycle's realpolitik strategy targets commodity metal sulfates for cathode makers
“So life cycle is, is the real politic of the three. Life cycle is born from hatch DNA. Hatch has been making mining electro primary extraction, electro winning equipment for a very long time. And life cycle says the world wants sulfate metal sulfate, excuse me…”
Steingart: 18650 cells became the linchpin enabling low-cost energy storage
“The idea that the cell that Brett is, is taking apart for you today would be the commodity cell when I was Brett's age 20 years ago was, seemed impossible. But through just brutally Efficient engineering. It turned out to be the linchpin for enabling low-cost …”
Steingart: Early Tesla used laptop battery cells to avoid explosion risks
“Six years later, after all of these batteries catching fire, the initial team at Tesla said, let's just use cells that we don't know don't explode, which are cells that are in laptops. So the immediate predecessor to the cell that Brett took apart was used in …”
Steingart: Hydromet battery recyclers use piranha solution to cut leaching time
“What most recyclers use now for hydromet digestion is, is a combination of sulfuric acid with hydrogen peroxide for a bit of kick H two O two. And this is really nasty stuff. It's called piranha, because it eats through anything, and, ah, it reduces the reside…”
Steingart: Ascend Elements avoids solvent extraction with Hydro-to-Cathode process
“In terms of on the opposite end, in terms of innovating on a well understood process, Ascend Elements is has something they call hydro to cathode. That's a process in which they cleverly don't
[1078] Use solvent extraction because they say, hey, most of what t…”