Toyota, Redwood Materials expand upon battery recycling agreement

Toyota Motor North America (TMNA) and Redwood Materials on Thursday (Nov. 16) announced plans to expand upon their existing battery recycling agreement for Toyota's end-of-life EV batteries.

The latest agreement is aimed at creating pathways for end-of-life EV batteries used in Toyota's battery electric vehicles (BEV) and hybrid vehicles. Further, the plan also includes Toyota sourcing Cathode Active Materials (CAM) and anode copper foil from Redwood's recycling activities back into its battery supply chain.

"Working with Redwood Materials, we are creating a circular supply chain to optimize logistics, expand refining, and ensure that the valuable metals recovered can be reintroduced into our future vehicles," said Christopher Yang, Group Vice President, Business Development, Toyota Motor North America.

"Accelerating our recycling efforts and domestic component procurement gets us closer to our ultimate goal of creating a closed-loop battery ecosystem that will become increasingly important as we add more vehicles with batteries to roads across North America."

The recent partnership builds upon the collaboration between the two companies announced last year for battery collection and recycling of Toyota's hybrid and BEV batteries. Toyota expects its battery recycling needs to grow substantially in the next few years as more of its EVs such as the first-gen Prius models introduced more than 20 years ago, reach closer to the end of their lifecycle.

Based on this agreement, the CAM recovered and produced from Redwood's recycling activities are expected to feed recycled material into future new battery production at Toyota Battery Manufacturing, North Carolina (TBMNC). As part of this agreement, Redwood will also provide materials that include a minimum of 20 percent recycled nickel, 20 percent recycled lithium, and 50 percent recycled cobalt, in their cathode and targeting recycled copper in their anode copper foil.