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Battery materials and recycling startup Redwood Materials is expanding a partnership with Volkswagen of America in its bid to collect more end-of-life batteries from consumer electronics and strip out the valuable materials so they can be used to make batteries for electric vehicles.
Redwood has said its technology can recover more than 95% of the critical minerals from batteries (like nickel, cobalt, lithium and copper) and then manufacture the metals into battery components that are supplied to U.S. battery manufacturers for new electric vehicles and energy storage products. Co-founder and CEO JB Straubel, who was formerly the co-founder and CTO at Tesla, has long argued that creating a closed-loop system will reduce battery costs and the need to mine and ship raw materials.
Volkswagen of America and sibling brand Audi contracted with Redwood last year to recover and recycle end-of-life EV battery packs from its thousand-dealership network in the United States. Audi then expanded its partnership with Redwood to launch a consumer-focused recycling program.
Now Volkswagen of America has agreed to set up bins at certain dealerships to collect consumer electronics. The batteries and devices, including cell phones, cordless power tools, electric toothbrushes, wireless headphones and other lithium-ion-powered devices that are collected in the bins, will be sent to Redwood’s Nevada facility to be repurposed as EV batteries.
The consumer recycling program officially launches at 14 dealerships April 22, including locations in New Jersey and Wisconsin. Volkswagen will also set up a bin during the New York International Auto Show, which will be held from April 5 to April 16. Additional dealerships will be added throughout the year.
Redwood has largely been a B2B enterprise since its founding. The company has locked in deals with companies like Panasonic to recycle and process the scrap to recycle scrap from battery cell production. In early 2021, Redwood quietly opened a recycling program to everyday consumers and all of the old electronics sitting in their junk drawers. Redwood posted a “recycle with us” tab on its website, along with an address, where consumers can send their e-waste, and a “contact us” button.
The program has collected tens of thousands of pounds of electronics from consumers, according to Redwood.
VW and Redwood want to turn your old laptops into EV batteries by Kirsten Korosec originally published on TechCrunch
TechCrunch Disrupt 2023 will have a whole new look this fall with one aim in mind: bring together investors, founders and technologists who have specific industry interests — all under one roof at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.
Disrupt has always been big. But this year we’re folding TC Sessions, the standalone industry events that are traditionally held throughout the year, into the big annual tech event.
Disrupt will have six industry tracks, each with its own stage, including AI, fintech, hardware, SaaS, security and sustainability. Yup, sustainability, a category that will combine transportation, climate tech, smart cities and renewables.
What the heck is sustainable tech, anyway? In our experience, it’s a moving target. The term is arguably many things: aspirational, a misnomer, a buzzword and a catch-all for products and services that are less environmentally destructive than doing business as normal.
To us, the goal of sustainable tech is simply to do less harm to the planet (thus sustaining something close to life as we know it). Yet, how to achieve that goal — without resting on piecemeal tweaks and greenwashing — is a rich and messy topic worth probing.
That is what we aim to do on the Sustainability Stage — discuss material ways to mitigate the damage we’re doing, while interrogating bullshit and distractions along the way.
The stakes have never been higher. As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said with the release of its sixth major assessment, “keeping warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels requires deep, rapid and sustained greenhouse gas emissions reductions in all sectors.” The tech industry must do its part by drawing down scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions, cleaning up its pollutive supply chains and accelerating the transition to renewables.
Disrupt in particular is all about startups. The specific areas we’re eager to dig into this year via panels and fireside chats include: fixing the broken U.S. power grid, examining how cities will adapt to more frequent extreme weather events, mitigating fast fashion’s environmental toll and rethinking some of the world’s most-loved beverages.
Book your early-bird pass today and save $800 to the startup event of the year. Prices go up May 12.
Sustainability at Disrupt by Kirsten Korosec originally published on TechCrunch
As a Universal Hydrogen-branded plane, equipped with the largest hydrogen fuel cell ever to power an aircraft, made its maiden test flight in eastern Washington, co-founder and CEO Paul Eremenko declared the moment the dawn of a “new golden age of aviation.”
The 15-minute test flight of a modified Dash-8 aircraft was short, but it showed that hydrogen could be viable as a fuel for short-hop passenger aircraft. That is, if Universal Hydrogen — and others in the emerging world of hydrogen flight — can make the technical and regulatory progress needed to make it a mainstream product.
Dash-8s, a staple at regional airports, usually transport up to 50 passengers on short hops. The Dash-8 used in Thursday’s test flight from the Grant County International Airport in Moses Lake had decidedly different cargo. The Universal Hydrogen test plane, nicknamed Lightning McClean, had just two pilots, an engineer and a lot of tech onboard, including an electric motor and hydrogen fuel cell supplied by two other startups.
The stripped-down interior contained two racks of electronics and sensors, and two large hydrogen tanks with 30 kg of fuel. Beneath the plane’s right wing, an electric motor from magniX was being driven by the new hydrogen fuel cell from Plug Power. This system turns hydrogen into electricity and water — an emission-free powerplant that Eremenko believes represents the future of aviation.
The fuel cell operated throughout the flight, generating up to 800kW of power and producing nothing but water vapor and smiles on the faces of a crowd of Universal Hydrogen engineers and investors.
“We think it’s a pretty monumental accomplishment,” Eremenko said. “It keeps us on track to have probably the first certified hydrogen airplane in passenger service.”
Aviation currently contributes about 2.5% of global carbon emissions, and is forecast to grow by 4% annually.
The Universal Hydrogen-branded plane also relied on jet fuel. Notice the Pratt and Whitney turboprop engine under one wing. Image Credits: Mark Harris
The test flight, which was a success, doesn’t mean entirely zero-carbon aviation is just around the corner.
Beneath the Dash-8’s other wing ran a standard Pratt and Whitney turboprop engine (notice the difference in the photo above), with about twice as much power as the fuel-cell side. That redundancy helped smooth a path with the FAA, which issued an experimental special airworthiness certificate for the Dash-8 tests in early February.
One of the test pilots, Michael Bockler, told TechCrunch that the aircraft “flew like a normal Dash-8, with just a slight yaw.” He noted that at one point, in level flight, the plane was flying almost entirely on fuel cell power, with the turboprop engine throttled down.
“Until both motors are driven by hydrogen, it’s still just a show,” said a senior engineer consulting to the sustainable aviation industry. “But I don’t want to scoff at it because we need these stepping stones to learn.”
Part of the problem with today’s fuel cells is that they can be tricky to cool. Jet engines run much hotter, but expel most of that heat through their exhausts. Because fuel cells use an electrochemical reaction rather than simply burning hydrogen, the waste heat has to be removed through a system of heat exchangers and vents.
ZeroAvia, another startup developing hydrogen fuel cells for aviation, crashed its first flying prototype in 2021 after turning off its fuel cell mid-air to allow it to cool, and was then unable to restart it. ZeroAvia has since taken to the air again with a hybrid hydrogen/fossil fuel set-up similar to Universal Hydrogen’s, although on a smaller twin-engine aircraft.
Mark Cousin, Universal Hydrogen’s CTO, told TechCrunch that its fuel cell could run all day without overheating, thanks to its large air ducts.
Another issue for fuel cell aircraft is storing the hydrogen needed to fly. Even in its densest, super-cooled liquid form, hydrogen contains only about a quarter the energy of a similar volume of jet fuel. Wing tanks are not large enough for any but the shortest flights, and so the fuel has to be stored within the fuselage. Today’s 15-minute flight used about 16kg of gaseous hydrogen — half the amount stored in two motorbike-sized tanks within the passenger compartment. Universal Hydrogen plans to convert its test aircraft to run on liquid hydrogen later this year.
A Universal Hydrogen module. Image Credits: Mark Harris
Eremenko co-founded Universal Hydrogen in 2020, and the company raised $20.5 million in a 2021 Series A funding round led by Playground Global. Funding to date is approaching $100 million, including investments from Airbus, General Electric, American Airlines, JetBlue and Toyota. The company is headquartered just up the road from SpaceX in Hawthorne, California, with an engineering facility in Toulouse, France.
Universal Hydrogen will now conduct further tests at Moses Lake. The company will work on additional software development, and eventually convert the plane to use liquid hydrogen. Early next year, the aircraft will likely be retired — with the fuel cell heading to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.
Universal Hydrogen hopes to start shipping fuel cell conversion kits for regional aircraft like the Dash-8 as soon as 2025. The company already has nearly 250 retrofit orders valued at more than $1 billion from 16 customers, including Air New Zealand. John Thomas, CEO of Connect Airlines, which plans to be the first U.S. carrier to use Universal Hydrogen’s technology, said the “partnership provides the fastest path to zero-emissions operation for the global airline industry.”
Universal Hydrogen isn’t just producing the razors — it’s also selling the blades.
Almost all the hydrogen used today is produced at the point of consumption. That’s not only because hydrogen leaks easily and can damage traditional steel containers, but mainly because in its most useful form — a compact liquid — it has to be kept at just 20 degrees above absolute zero, usually requiring expensive refrigeration.
The liquid hydrogen used in the Moses Lake test came from a commercial “green hydrogen” gas supplier — meaning it was made using renewable energy. Only a tiny fraction of hydrogen produced today is made this way.
If the hydrogen economy is really going to make a dent in the climate crisis, green hydrogen will have to become a lot easier — and cheaper — to produce, store and transport.
Eremenko originally started Universal Hydrogen to design standardized hydrogen modules that could be hauled by standard semi-trucks and simply slotted into aircraft or other vehicles for immediate use. The current design can keep hydrogen liquid for up to 100 hours, and he has often likened them to the convenience of Nespresso units. Universal Hydrogen says it has over $2 billion in fuel service orders for the decade ahead.
Prototype modules were demonstrated in December, and the company hopes to break ground later this year on a 630,000-square-foot manufacturing facility for them in Albuquerque, New Mexico. That nearly $400 million project is contingent on the success of a previously unreported $200+ million U.S. Department of Energy loan application. Eremenko says the application has passed the first phase of due diligence within the DOE.
Some experts are skeptical that hydrogen will ever make a meaningful dent in aviation’s emissions. Bernard van Dijk, an aviation scientist at the Hydrogen Science Coalition, appreciates the simplicity of Universal Hydrogen’s modules, but notes that even NASA has trouble controlling hydrogen leaks with its rockets. “You still have to connect the canisters to the aircraft. How is that all going to be safe? Because if it leaks and somebody lights a match, that is a recipe for disaster,” he says. “I think they’re also underestimating the whole certification process for a new hydrogen powertrain.”
Even when those obstacles are overcome, there is the problem of making enough green hydrogen using renewable electricity, at a price people will be prepared to play. “If you want to get all European flights on hydrogen, you’d need 89,000 large wind turbines to produce enough hydrogen,” says van Dijk. “They would cover an area about twice the size of the Netherlands.”
But Eremenko remains convinced that Universal Hydrogen and its partners can make it work, with the help of a $3 per kilogram subsidy for green hydrogen in Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. “Of all the things that keep me awake at night,” he says, “the cost and availability of green hydrogens is not one of them.”
Universal Hydrogen takes to the air with the largest hydrogen fuel cell ever to fly by Kirsten Korosec originally published on TechCrunch
The big, giant message Tesla CEO Elon Musk and other execs tried to impart during its four-hour Tesla Investor Day was how the company would be the driver of a global shift away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy. Investors, at least those active after the market closed, weren’t impressed perhaps because it lacked that big product announcement, specific details on the next step in its so-called master plan 3 or Musk’s signature “one more thing” line.
Shares of Tesla fell 5.66% in after-hours trading.
Much of the event was more history lesson than a forecast of future business — although the nuance was that, of course, all roads lead to the future. And large sections of the event were dedicated to operational efficiencies and efforts to reduce cost at virtually every level of company. (which normally investors like).
Perhaps the most interesting parts are what was not said. Musk and an unusually long lineup of department leads did not share new details on Tesla’s next-generation EV and its upcoming factory in Mexico nor did they address current issues with its Full Self-Driving software that is currently unavailable to those who opted to buy the $15,000 option due to a recall.
Still, there was some news and insights from the event. Here’s a roundup highlighting the big stuff.
Image Credits: Tesla/screenshot
This isn’t a new goal for Tesla. But a string of executives, who came on stage to talk about everything from manufacturing and raw materials to design, charging and batteries, all really tried to prove their case for how they would reach that goal.
The slide above shows the existing portfolio, the Model S, Model X, Model Y and Model 3 — as well as the Tesla Semi and the Cybertruck, and two veiled vehicles.
It’s worth looking at the 20 million vehicles per year number for a bit of a reality check. Tesla produced 1,369,611 and delivered 1,313,851 vehicles in 2022. Toyota, the global sales leader, sold 10.5 million vehicles last year.
That means, and follow the math, Tesla would need to increase its production (and sales mind you) about 15 times from 2022.
So, how will Tesla achieve this? Musk said it’s not a demand problem (a phrase he has used repeatedly in the past). The tough part is building the darned things, he said. Tesla’s answers are: vertical integration, scaling existing factories and building new ones, making the manufacturing process more efficient and adding a few more models. (But, interestingly, not too many; Musk said maybe 10 models total).
Tesla is famous for its constant push towards vertical integration. It’s the only car company in recent memory that took on making its own seats, for instance.
That message continued at the investor event, with executives discussing different pieces of the vertical-integration goal. Tesla has brought in house already, including building its own chip. But the company has continued to push the bounds of vertical integration, right down to the software it uses for in-house operations. Execs said that recently that got rid of an outsourced software for recruiting to use its own and that it developed its own purpose-built microprocessor for high-power electronics that will reduce costs by half.
For Tesla, vertical integration equals cost reductions. And that’s one of the big aims to achieve that bigger mission.
Image Credits: Tesla/screenshot
Tesla has even extended its vertical integration efforts to the materials it uses in battery cells.
Tesla officially broke ground at a new lithium refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas, Drew Baglino, senior vice president of powertrain and energy engineering, confirmed during the event.
During the presentation, Tesla showed a rendering of the 50 gigawatt-hour per year lithium refinery. The company’s messaging around speed and scale continued with the refinery project, as Baglino noted they’re working to have it operational by the end of 2023.
“This is a good example of something where we’re basically talking about breaking ground and and starting commissioning within 10 months and with actual production within 12 months,” Baglino said. “That’s the target.”
Musk added later, during a Q&A session, that a cathode processing facility will eventually be built adjacent to the lithium refinery. He also noted that the company would prefer if others took on lithium mining.
“We’re doing it because we have to not because we want to,” Musk said.
Image Credits: Tesla/screenshot
Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador technically broke the news Tuesday, but Musk reiterated the announcement without sharing any new details aside from a rendering.
“We’re excited to announce that the next Tesla gigafactory will be in Mexico near Monterey,” Musk said. “We do want to emphasize we will continue to expand production at all of our existing factories, including California, Nevada, here in Texas, Shanghai, so we intend to increase production at all factories. So the Giga Mexico would be supplemental to the output of all the other factories.”
Musk went on to tease a grand opening event at the factory.
Image Credits: Tesla/screenshot
As we mentioned above, Tesla displayed two veiled vehicles during the presentation, hinting at how it will build its next-generation of vehicles on a completely different platform design. A big part of that design is building in a way that relies on automation to scale faster and cheaper.
“It’s going to look something like this where we build all the sides of the cars independently, we only paint what we need to, and then we assemble the parts of the car once, and only once. We put them where they need to go,” Baglino said.
Baglino noted that this would mean more people and robots having the space to work on separate pieces of the car, rather than lugging heavy objects to a central buildout. What that looks like on the factory floor is sub-assemblies, wherein the front, rear and floor with seats are assembled separately, and then put together at final assembly.
“To increase the scale of adoption of electric vehicles to the orders of magnitude that we just showed you, we have to make constraints part of the solution,” he said. “It leads us to greater than 40% reduction in footprint, which means we can build factories faster, with less capex and more output per unit dollar.”
While that theoretically sounds neat, factories are dangerous places and when more people work in closer quarters, injuries can happen.
Neither Baglino, Musk nor head of design Franz von Holzhausen gave additional details on next-generation vehicles. The only hint: This next-gen design may also be used on the Cybertruck, according to Baglino.
Image Credits: Tesla/screenshot
As part of Tesla’s next-gen design, the company is developing a new drive unit that it says will be more scalable, in large part because it will eventually eliminate the use of rare earth materials.
“We have designed our next drive unit to use a permanent magnet motor to not use any rare earth materials at all,” said Colin Campbell, VP of powertrain engineering, noting that the new drive unit cost has been reduced to $1,000. Those savings could, in theory, be passed onto the consumer to make for a more accessible, affordable EV.
Tesla said its next powertrain will also use 75% less silicone carbide without compromising performance or efficiency of the vehicle. The new powertrain is also compatible with any battery chemistry, which will give Tesla more flexibility in battery sourcing, said Campbell. Finally, Tesla’s new powertrain factory is apparently 50% smaller than the current one in Austin, which Campbell said means faster scaling of EV production.
The third part of Tesla’s Master Plan Part 3 is to switch home, business and industrial heating to heat pumps. Most of that portion of the presentation was just a Climate Tech 101 on the ill effects of traditional heating systems and how heat pumps could help. Musk said at some point Tesla might consider building heat pumps for the home to help solve this problem.
Tesla already produces heat pumps for its cars, so expanding into homes wouldn’t be far out of left field. But if you have a gas or oil heater, the good news is you don’t have to wait for Tesla to replace it. Plenty of other companies already do this, including Sealed and BlocPower.
Image Credits: Tesla
Tesla broke up its info-dump with some announcements, and several hints, on the future of its EV charging and energy storage businesses. Most concretely, the automaker formally introduced Magic Dock, an upgrade to Tesla’s charging stations which opens them up to vehicles that aren’t Teslas. Rolling out the tech will enable Tesla to tap into billions in federal subsidies.
Tesla also said it will add a $30 “unlimited overnight home charging” plan to Tesla Electric in July. An invite-only electric plan, Tesla Electric is exclusively available to Powerwall havers in parts of Texas where retail choice exists. Tesla added that it aims to expand its electric plan into other areas — “market by market, in the same way that we’ve approached Tesla insurance.” The company offered no specific dates.
Later, the automaker said it would debut new energy storage products in 2023. One chart shown to investors appeared to depict new megapack and powerwall designs, also hidden beneath illustrated veils. Take this with a grain or more of salt; Tesla has a track record of missing its own deadlines.
Image Credits: Tesla/screenshot
Tesla teased a little more information about its humanoid robot, the Optimus, with a video showing two robots slowly building another bot — a big step up from the prototype Tesla showed last October at AI Day.
As usual, Musk stated that Optimus will be worth significantly more than the car side of things. Optimus is trained using the same AI that trains Tesla’s Autopilot and FSD, and Musk detailed how even much of the hardware for Optimus is taken from Tesla’s cars.
“The actuators in Optimus are all custom designed Tesla actuators,” said Musk. “We designed the electric motor or the gearbox, the power electronics, obviously the battery pack and everything else that goes into Optimus. The same team that designed the groundbreaking electric motors that are in the Model S Plaid designed the actuators in the robot.”
What this means, said Musk, is that Tesla has the tools to bring an actual humanoid robot product to market at scale. Now it’s just a question of timing. And also, apparently, of what the ratio of humans to humanoid robots will be. Musk reckons it’ll be greater than one-to-one because the robots can be used at homes, in industrial use cases and more.
How the robot fits into Tesla’s Master Plan Part 3, which is focused on a sustainable energy future for Earth, isn’t exactly clear.
Everything Elon Musk and execs shared (and skipped) at Tesla Investor Day by Kirsten Korosec originally published on TechCrunch
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