planet because it’s the right thing to do ... Elon is
driven by something else,” says Kelty. “There’s no
heart in it. There’s no passion in it. Whereas with
JB, there’s this concern for people.”
Straubel left Tesla in 2019. The ramp-up to pro-
duce the Model 3 in massive numbers had been ex-
cruciating, and Straubel says he wanted to develop
something new , instead of focusing on mass pro-
duction of a relatively proven technology. There
may also have been a personal element to the deci-
sion: “JB always felt he was able to work with Elon,
but I think there became a point in time where he
just couldn’t,” his mother says. “I think the rela-
tionship fractured.” Straubel says that he was on
good terms with Musk when he left Tesla, and that
the two still talk often. (Redwood is an indepen-
dent company from Tesla.) “He’s exceptionally de-
manding and can be a very diffi cult guy to work
for,” Straubel says of Musk. “But at the same time
I had a ton of respect for him.”
Musk certainly demands respect. But some in-
siders imply that Straubel never got his public due
for making possible everything that Tesla accom-
plished. “The diff erence between Tesla and every
other car company is the power train; it has been
from the very beginning,” says Jaramillo, referring
to the batteries, software, and power electronics
that underpin the EVs. “That’s the core of the
business—and that’s what JB was responsible for.”
STRAUBEL STARTED THINKING about battery
materials when he was building Tesla’s fi rst major
battery factory in the mid-2010s. He realized that
if it sparked the transformational change he hoped
for, it would become increasingly diffi cult to fi nd
those crucial components, not to mention that the
society- wide battery transition would generate gar-
gantuan quantities of waste, with no good way to
dispose of used EV batteries when they got old.
Recycling could solve that problem, and also help
fi ll some of the world’s looming shortage of battery
materials. Straubel founded Redwood in 2017 while
still at Tesla, and hired a small team to quietly work
on that challenge. After Straubel left his old job,
Redwood began taking investment, and in August
2020, funders poured $40 million into the small
company. Meanwhile, Straubel set to work build-
ing out a facility to start processing used batteries.
There are two steps to recycling batteries: First
they have to be sorted according to the minerals
they’re made of—nickel-metal hydride, lithium
manganese oxide, or lithium iron phosphate, for
instance—then separated from their plastic cas-
ings and ground down into powder. Second, those
pulverized batteries have to be turned back into
usable materials.
The fi rst step is under way when I visit Redwood
in April 2022. (The second “hydrometallurgical”
step hasn’t yet begun at scale, but Redwood says
it will start happening in the coming months.)
Inside a converted warehouse, workers feed old
batteries into a contraption that squats above the
fl oor like a gigantic beetle. Straubel conceived of
the machine himself, and he says it can sort dif-
ferent kinds of used batteries a thousand times
faster than a human being can. But he defl ects
my questions about how exactly it works, and de-
clines to go into much detail on two-story-tall in-
dustrial contraptions that are pulverizing batter-
ies before chemical processing. He says he doesn’t
want competitors to learn about Redwood’s tech-
nology. “We’re in a situation where I’m trying to
explain things poorly to you on purpose, which I
hate doing,” he says. Thanks to the advent of EVs,
the battery industry in the U.S. has grown tremen-
dously in recent years, and become fi ercely com-
petitive. “There’ll be some blood on the streets
when this is over,” says Trent Mell, the CEO of
Electra Battery Materials.
On the short tour, Straubel tells me he worries
Redwood is getting too much attention before it
is ready. “I’m really not a media person; I’d much
rather be in the engineering and the data,” he says
as we remove our safety vests and goggles after-
ward. “I get more antsy as the day goes on.” He
looks at his communications rep Alexis George-
son, who’d chaperoned us the whole day, and
seems to become aware that mentioning his dis-
comfort had been some kind of slip: “I can see
Alexis cringing.” Straubel’s wife Boryana used to
help balance out some of his introversion. A Bul-
garian immigrant who arrived in the U.S. in 2005,
she worked in Tesla’s HR department, where she70 TIME June 20/June 27, 2022
△
From left:
Straubel,
far left, with
Musk, center,
in 2012;
unwrapping a
motor in 2004
at Tesla’s fi rst
industrial
facility; in the
Mojave Desert
observing the
fi rst X Prize
attempt by
SpaceShipOne
in 2004 MUSK: PATRICK TEHAN—MEDIANEWS GROUP/BAY AREA NEWS/GETTY IMAGES; COURTESY (2)WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM