67will need to mine more metals like lithium and
cobalt than have been extracted in all of human
history. U.S. companies have started planning
huge new battery factories, but Straubel thinks
we won’t have enough materials to supply them,
not to mention that nearly all the world’s facili-
ties to process those materials are in Asia, mean-
ing they will have travel 10,000 miles before we
can use them. To that end, Redwood Materials is
building a gargantuan facility outside Reno, which
will process new minerals, recycled batteries, and
manufacturing scrap into enough copper foil and
powdery, mineral- rich cathode active material to
build batteries for about 1 million electric cars a
year by 2025. To completely transition the U.S. to
electric vehicles, we’ll need about 10 facilities of
that size, with mining operations on an unheard-of
scale to supply them. But once more old batteries
start being retired, Straubel says, his facilities will
switch to pure recycling, creating a closed, clean
system in which we reuse minerals in one battery
generation after another, forever.
The last part might sound like techno- optimist
hyperbabble—but it doesn’t feel that way coming△
Straubel with
the vintage
Porsche he
rebuilt as an
electric car in
the ’90s