Toyota to source battery materials from Redwood – sourced from old hybrid batteries

Redwood Materials which is building recycling and battery material plants in Nevada and South Carolina will deliver cathode materials and copper foil to Toyota’s new battery plant in North Carolina which by 2030 will produce up to 30GWh of hybrid, PHEV and BEV batteries.

For Toyota’s products, Redwood is targeting a minimum of 20% recycled nickel, 20% recycled lithium, and 50% recycled cobalt, in the cathode material and 100% recycled copper in the anode copper foil.

Toyota is already one of Redwood’s partners with an agreement to collect, test and recycle batteries from Toyota’s hybrid and PHEV vehicles. Depending on which trim level and market, these batteries are since 2016 either nickel metal hydride or lithium-ion. Nickel metal hydride batteries do also contain both nickel and cobalt.

Toyota which was the first car maker to mass produce a battery-assisted vehicle, the Prius, are no strangers to circular solutions. In the US the company has had agreement with Retriev (now Cirba Solutions) to pre-process nickel metal hydride batteries and already in 2010 the company was working with its battery supplier, Panasonic, and its battery material supplier Sumitomo Metal & Mining, to recover nickel hydroxide from the hybrid batteries which the was reused in new batteries.

Toyota and Panasonic has a long-lasting cooperation in battery technology ranging from the early nickel metal hydride batteries to cells in the company’s first BEV the bZ4x as well as a joint venture for development of solid state batteries. Also Redwood are working closely with Panasonic which is both a upstream supplier and future downstream buyer of Redwood’s material at the Tesla gigafactory in Nevada. However for the North Carolina plant, in Liberty, Toyota has not revealed any formal cooperation with Panasonic.

First batteries from the Toyota plant will be made for the hybrid market and are expected to be produced from 2025.