
Tesla’s former CTO is building a giant lithium-ion battery recycling operation - Osiris30
https://www.wsj.com/articles/one-of-the-brains-behind-tesla-found-a-new-way-to-make-electric-cars-cheaper-11598673630
======
apacheCamel
Back in my day, I worked at Bestbuy and if you have ever been in one, you may
notice that we have a "recycle" area in the front of the store. It is a
separated bin, labelled with "wires", "cds", "batteries", etc. The one that
always confused me the most was "batteries" since almost EVERY time they would
empty that bin into our recycle bin in the back, they would dump the batteries
into the trash because _almost_ all of them were non-lithium-ion. My manager
said we couldn't recycle regular batteries so they needed thrown away and
sorting through the absolute mound of batteries was too much to do.

I know we would receive laptop batteries, phone batteries, and other
rechargeables but they never made it into the bin. I hear now, anything with a
screen costs money to recycle at Bestbuy. They really seem to be taking a step
in the wrong direction. Better labelled bins, and easier access to recycling
areas will make it easier for the average person to recycle, which in my
opinion, is a net gain for us all.

~~~
ckocagil
Have you tried replacing a phone battery recently? It involves using hot air
to soften the glue, a lot of manual labor, unplugging wires, and carefully
replacing the battery. Then you need to glue everything back together and pray
the device works.

There's a straightforward solution to this and the recycling problem:

1\. Mandate that every mass produced device with a li-ion battery have a
simple mechanism to remove the battery

2\. Add a very small tax to each device with such battery (in the order of
cents)

3\. Pay the same amount back to whoever brings the battery to a recycling
plant

There you go. This system has only one knob (the amount paid per battery) and
by tweaking it you can adjust the incentive to recycle. You sit back and let
the market sort out the details.

Not to mention that this would extend the lifetime of phones by making it easy
to replace the battery.

~~~
dehrmann
> 1\. Mandate that every mass produced device with a li-ion battery have a
> simple mechanism to remove the battery

Apple has argued that they can fit a bigger, harder to remove battery into
devices, and the added capacity because it's bigger makes up for it being hard
to remove. I've changed batteries on a Thinkpad X1 Carbon, and it's very
straightforward; I'm not sure how much truth there isn't to that argument on
laptops. Phones are so small that I find that explanation more plausible.

~~~
sudosysgen
All Apple would have to do is to have the back cover use screws instead of
adhesives, using up about one tenth of a cc more volume, and use a more
malleable adhesive for the battery (or none at all). It would take at most two
more tenths of a cubic centimeter more volume.

~~~
roenxi
> All Apple would have to do...

This is hardware engineering, and high quality engineering at that. When Apple
decided to use an adhesive rather than screws they could would have had
excellent consideration of cost/quality/aesthetic issues.

It is true that they could easily create devices to match the requirements of
randoms on Hacker News, but that isn't going to lead to Apple - the once in a
decade consumer products behemoth. It leads to the Openmoko. Turns out nearly
nobody wants that.

So yeah, it is an "All Apple would have to do", but evidence is Apple is much
better at deciding what it _should_ and _shouldn 't_ do than back-seat
designers. Sorry if that sounds a bit brusque, a nerve might have been hit
here. But hardware isn't easy.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> It is true that they could easily create devices to match the requirements
> of randoms on Hacker News, but that isn't going to lead to Apple - the once
> in a decade consumer products behemoth. It leads to the Openmoko. Turns out
> nearly nobody wants that.

This fallacy seems to be common in discussions of Apple. Apple is very
profitable, therefore everything they do is infallible and impossible to
improve.

Look at a picture of an Openmoko device. Just look at it. Here:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openmoko](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openmoko)

Compare this to various modern phones with a replaceable battery:

[https://www.androidauthority.com/best-android-phones-
removab...](https://www.androidauthority.com/best-android-phones-removable-
battery-697520/)

There are obvious reasons to expect the former to fail in the market but not
the latter, even though they all have a replaceable battery.

Meanwhile the Apple devices further run iOS and are compatible with iMessage
and the complete set of third party iOS apps, which are a large component of
their success, but none of which would be any less true if they had a
replaceable battery.

Doing a lot of things right can't prove that they're not doing a specific
thing wrong.

~~~
totalZero
I don't think anyone in this thread has suggested that Apple is infallible.

Rather, they are iterating upon the same few products with a zillion engineers
in eensy weensy form factors where space is at a premium, so they probably
think about why they do things a certain way.

~~~
sudosysgen
And yet, their phones still have more than enough space for 4 screws, as you
would see if you opened an iPhone. Actually, just reusing existing screw holes
could do it.

There is a good reason, and the reason is that Apple doesn't want people to
easily repair their phones.

------
abhv
The story is unfortunately sparse on the details of how the recycling works
(whether there is any truly new idea).

Based on the "furnace" picture and language about melting down the batteries,
it seems like their approach is to just treat the incoming batteries as
"enriched ore" and proceed with an energy-intensive, standard, metal
extraction process.

So what they save is the huge amount of energy and dirtiness required to dig
in the earth (in the few suitable places on the earth) for rocks with <.5%
metal content and crush those rocks into dust, which is substantial, but not
revolutionary?

~~~
rklaehn
Does it matter if it is revolutionary? A lot of things that tesla does are not
revolutionary but a very large number of small improvements that end up
resulting in a qualitative change.

E.g. everybody is talking about exotic battery chemistries while Tesla is able
to wring out significantly more performance from their existing chemistry by
doing tabless electrodes.

You could argue that the focus on revolutionary progress versus incremental
improvements is sometimes holding us back.

~~~
xiphias2
Tesla's competition wanted to make sure that their margins don't decrease, as
most of their stock holders are chasing dividends. Dividends made sense in the
20th century (and those companies had better performance), but since 1990-2000
companies that reinvested all their money into R&D and gave back 0 dividends
had better returns even disregarding the tax advantages.

~~~
zarkov99
This has always puzzled me. As a stockholder what is the use of a stock that
never pays dividends? What does ownership of a bussiness mean when you have no
share of its profits?

~~~
xiphias2
Wouldn't you want to own a company that doesn't pay profits for 20 years, but
gives you $10B every year after those 20 years?

Discounted cash flow
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discounted_cash_flow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discounted_cash_flow))
is being used to value companies for this reason.

~~~
itsoktocry
> _Wouldn 't you want to own a company that doesn't pay profits for 20 years,
> but gives you $10B every year after those 20 years?_

That's an expected dividend.

What is the DCF available to shareholders of a company that never pays a
dividend? Nothing.

------
merricksb
[https://archive.md/09542](https://archive.md/09542)

~~~
czottmann
Thank you!

------
mauvehaus
"At the same time, the supply of used batteries is exploding."

That's an interesting/unfortunate choice of words given the well-documented
issues with lithium-ion batteries :-)

~~~
gibolt
Maybe they are predicting the just released Galaxy Note 20 will be a repeat of
the 7?

~~~
sukilot
No. All kinds of batteries explode in recycling centers, not just faulty ones.

------
Jugurtha
I couldn't parse this paragraph:

> _To JB Straubel, one of the brains behind Tesla Inc., TSLA -1.13%▲ that
> refuse holds the key to driving the electric car revolution forward—and
> making the vehicles affordable enough for everyone to own one._

Could someone help?

> _Mr. Straubel said in his first in-depth interview about his new venture
> since it was formed in 2017 while still at Tesla._

Was that with Tesla's blessing?

~~~
jhardy54
Refuse (noun): worthless or useless part of something.

(Prounuced 'ref-use', rhymes with 'refuge'.)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Where are you from? I'm en-gb native and refuse doesn't rhyme with refuge.

Ref-use: ref as in referee, use as in noose, or loose.

But then in en-gb we'd say "waste" or maybe "rubbish".

~~~
coldpie
In en-US, refuse (verb) is pronounced reh- _fuse_ ("I refuse to do that."),
while refuse (noun) is pronounced _ref_ -use ("This refuse must be disposed
of.") The accent switches syllables.

------
reco
Does anyone know what the price is for bulk e-waste a company like this would
pay? Or how to find it?

I’ve been interested in setting up some free local e-waste collection for
recycling, but it seems like the cost of collection and sorting is more than
the price I can get for it.

~~~
alvern
Currently anything Li-ion is around $1.50 per pound (Midwest US prices) to be
accepted for hazardous waste recycling. This means it costs you the consumer
to have your laptop battery recycled.

I work with a company that recycles older hybrid batteries from Toyota, Honda,
Ford. Most of these are NiMH and pay $0.40-$0.80 per pound for the Nickel
value alone.

So a NiMH hybrid battery is worth $50 for the core from a Prius, but a lithium
battery from a Nissan Leaf would cost you ~$700 to recycle.

------
aarreedd
How does a company get an article like this published?

~~~
mymacbook
Not many technical engineering leaders have a passion for leaving the world
better than they found it, especially in an area where they consumed a lot of
raw materials to make their life's greatest work.

Very few companies are doing more than lip service on the very difficult
(sometimes impossible) task of dirty work to get recycled materials into the
supply chain as a viable (and someday better) alternative than new raw
materials from the earth.

This has so many implications if successful – you can compete with mining 1:1.
It allows a company to handle disruptions in the traditional supply chain,
etc. But, today this is hard to do and you often only see post-consumer
recycled materials used behind-the-scenes (e.g. a plastic frame holding a non-
essential chamber) or in packaging (e.g. bamboo ink, cardboard boxes without
white paint), but it's rarely used in what the consumer sees (notable
exception: The Google Nest Mini "fabric" is made from plastic bottles).

As more devices rely on batteries, we need to think about how we can start
harvesting those materials for re-use ourselves and not just shipping overseas
and closing our eyes. It's much more expensive to intentionally source
recycled materials today and that is, unfortunately, a losing proposition for
most manufacturers.

\-----

[https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/google-newest-
nest...](https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/google-newest-nest-mini-
made-100-recycled-plastic-bottles)

[https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/04/18/apples-2019-envir...](https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/04/18/apples-2019-environmental-
responsibility-report-touts-increased-focus-on-recycling-and-material-
recovery)

------
AndrewBissell
The existence of this company itself is pretty old news, Lora Kolodny reported
on it in 2018: [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/06/tesla-cto-jb-straubel-
redwoo...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/06/tesla-cto-jb-straubel-redwood-
materials-recycling-expands-nevada.html)

What's new is Tim Higgins giving JB Straubel space in the pages of WSJ to run
a PR campaign for his company.

------
neonate
[https://archive.is/3LYRl](https://archive.is/3LYRl)

------
xoxoy
interesting timing...considering there’s a lot of scrutiny from whistleblowers
and short sellers around scrap inventory on Tesla’s balance sheet and Tesla’s
real relationship with this company.

will need to dig around but recall seeing a screenshot of either an analyst
call or archived page that suggested someone let it slip this was a Tesla
subsidiary and not a completely unrelated entity.

~~~
ianai
Uh why does that matter?

~~~
xoxoy
the whistleblower Marty Tripp alleged that as Tesla ramped up Model 3
production their battery production facility was creating hundreds of millions
in wasted battery product.

Scrap inventory has a severely depreciated value - the emails that have
surfaced suggest they may have tried to hide it under “Work in Progress” where
they could value it fully.

If they actually wrote down $100M+ in battery inventory that would be a
massive shock - no investor is considering that level of scrap in valuing the
company right now.

If they have a secret subsidiary they could sell it to this entity at some
bloated price without anyone knowing.

This company then becomes some highly indebted entity that will probably
eventually go bankrupt but save Tesla’s valuation.

~~~
bob33212
That is a reasonable concern from an accountant point of view. But time and
time again Elon has shown that he isn't operating with the normal MBA CEO
mindset. He is operating as an engineer, and all that matters in the
engineering world is that if you can successfully build the technology and
factories to remake these packs at a low cost, your total costs will be
significantly lower than your competition. It doesn't take an MBA to
understand the implications of that.

~~~
xoxoy
if this is indeed a Tesla subsidiary, it’s accounting fraud

~~~
recuter
How could it possibly be?

Tesla had $100M+ of scrap inventory they pretended was still good and then
somehow created a subsidiary out of thin air and "sold" the scrap to it?

I don't understand where the $100M the subsidiary paid materialised from. How
is any of this possible.

What's preventing others from having secret fake subsidiaries and printing
money out of nowhere?

~~~
xoxoy
I mean it’s hardly a secret if it’s on the cover of WSJ.

The question is who funded this company and what transactions have they made
with Tesla?

but obviously no one will tell you those two things.

------
monadic2
Why is battery disposal such a municipality-dependent shitshow in the US? The
vast majority of cities I've lived in, with the exception of san francisco,
essentially encourage people to throw their batteries directly in the trash by
providing no disposal mechanism via municipal waste collection. This is much,
much more dangerous in the short term with lithium ion batteries.

------
afrojack123
[https://thebulletin.org/2009/01/the-limits-of-energy-
storage...](https://thebulletin.org/2009/01/the-limits-of-energy-storage..).

Get the word out. Batteries are bad hydrogen is good. Current hydrogen gas
will have more energy than batteries at peak technology growth. This matters
because hydrogen cars are cheaper, more scalable, and more inclusive than
battery cars. Rich people get battery cars, you get a battery bike.

~~~
Robotbeat
The claim that hydrogen cars are cheaper and that battery cars are just for
the rich in comparison is entirely unfounded. I have no idea where this idea
came from as it is not borne by reality.

Compare two vehicles of the same overall type. A Toyota Mirai, one of the only
hydrogen cars available, with a Long-Range Model 3.

Msrp: $58,550 for the Mirai, $46,990 for the LR Model 3.

Range: 312 miles for the Mirai, 322 for Model 3 LR.

Curb weight (!): 4075lbs for the Mirai, 4072lbs for the Model 3 LR.

Top speed, 0-60mph: 111mph and 9s for the Mirai; 145mph and 4.4s Model 3 LR

Cost per mile: $0.33 per mile for Toyota Mirai in LA
[https://www.toyotasantamonica.com/toyota-mirai-
faqs/#:~:text...](https://www.toyotasantamonica.com/toyota-mirai-
faqs/#:~:text=How%20Much%20Hydrogen%20Fuel%20Costs,on%20the%20average%20consumption%20pattern).

About $0.05 per mile for the Tesla Model 3 LR (19 cents per kWh in LA for
households average, ~4 miles per kWh) for home charging and $0.07 per mile for
Model 3 LR with Supercharging (about 28 cents per kWh).

Battery-electric cars are basically cheaper and more convenient and more
efficient and better in virtually every single way. (Even lighter for more
range, which I was surprised at.)

~~~
dang
> That's ridiculous.

 _When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names.
"That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."_

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

(The parent comment has since been edited.)

~~~
sacredcows
Please stop

