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Tesla’s former CTO is building a giant lithium-ion battery recycling operation
- merricksb 6y agohttps://archive.md/09542 https://archive.md/09542
- czottmann 6y agoThank you!
- xoxoy 6y agointeresting 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 6y agoUh why does that matter?
- xoxoy 6y agothe 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.
- baybal2 6y agoWould it change the fact they will still be 100x times overvalued?
- xoxoy 6y agothe valuation could go in a second if there’s a hint of running low on liquidity - or that either assets appear bloated or liabilities understated also it’s the clearest sign of accounting fraud...but apparently the SEC doesn’t care to investigate that anymore.
- bob33212 6y agoThat 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 6y agoif this is indeed a Tesla subsidiary, it’s accounting fraud
- recuter 6y agoHow 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?
- maxerickson 6y agoFunding such a fraud could make sense for holders of large amounts of Tesla stock. Spend $100 million to prop up billions. Note that I'm commenting in the abstract, not commenting in support of fraud as an explanation. I have no information or opinion about this battery recycling company.
- baggachipz 6y agoIt doesn't; they're an anti-tesla shitposter[1] who tries to foment FUD at any opportunity. The company's not perfect and possibly over-valued, but they take any chance to attempt to sow negativity about them. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23921487 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23921487
- apacheCamel 6y agoBack 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.
- schoolornot 6y agoThis only applies to New Yorkers but there is a law on the books that requires retailers to accept used batteries of the same type they sell for recycling. I bring mine to a local Apple store and they gladly take them every time. Often I have a PC battery or two in the bag too.
- est31 6y agoThe same rule exists in Germany as well: distributors, if they sell batteries, also have to accept them. Same goes for (fluorescent) light bulbs. I think this rule is quite nice as it saves cost for waste disposal, using existing distributor infrastructure.
- sukilot 6y agoAre they required to recycle those batteries, or merely "accept" them?
- usrusr 6y agoSpeaking for Germany: accept, as in paying for proper disposal (which may or may not involve recycling). The main goal is keeping batteries out of regular refuse streams.
- abhv 6y agoThe 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 6y agoDoes 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 6y agoTesla'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.
- MetalGuru 6y agoIs this the whole shift from value to growth stocks? See it ever tipping back the other direction again?
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- aarreedd 6y agoHow does a company get an article like this published?
- mymacbook 6y agoNot 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-mini-made-100-recycled-plastic-bottles https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/google-newest-nest... https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/04/18/apples-2019-environmental-responsibility-report-touts-increased-focus-on-recycling-and-material-recovery https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/04/18/apples-2019-envir...
- sukilot 6y agoCall a friend at the newspaper. Be "interesting".
- notatoad 6y agoyou might find this interesting: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
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- mauvehaus 6y ago"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 :-)
- Jugurtha 6y agoI 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?
- peteretep 6y agoAre you missing that “refuse” can be a noun?
- Jugurtha 6y agoAbsolutely. I'm a native French speaker, but the comma separating the ticker symbol from the company name mislead me into understanding "one of the brains behind Tesla Inc [..] that refuse", and given the common pattern in articles in which either employees, shareholders, or investors join their forces against X, I bought it hook, line, and sinker. Thank you! I completely ignored the possibility.
- jhardy54 6y agoRefuse (noun): worthless or useless part of something. (Prounuced 'ref-use', rhymes with 'refuge'.)
- reco 6y agoDoes 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 6y agoCurrently 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.
- afrojack123 6y agohttps://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.
- kolinko 6y agohydrogen keeps status quo - big corporations supplying fuel stations. battery drives help with decentralisation - you can charge your car back at home from your own solar. Also, hydrogen has how much - 60% energy loss?
- afrojack123 6y agoStatus quo doesn't matter. Cost does. Efficiency doesn't matter. Cost does. Economics<-> Engineering <-> Science Link the 3 and you will understand. Economics: Rare earth metals are scare, expensive, and political. Hydrogen sourced from natural gas is abundant and 50% less pollution than oil and petrol. Hydrogen is operating expense(pay on usage), batteries(pay upfront). Engineering: Storage is everything. Batteries have about the same Mega Joules overall as hydrogen storage in a car because the hydrogen has to be compressed. You can compare the range between Model 3 and Hydrogen fuel cell cars and see the ranges are similar. MJ/kg is ultimately what determines cost and batteries have significantly worse MJ/kg than hydrogen tanks. Science: Peak battery innovation will only be able to match current hydrogen fuel cells MJ/kg.
- Robotbeat 6y agoHydrogen cars are both more expensive (both upfront and operational) AND less efficient than comparable electric cars while having less range, less convenient recharging (no home or work charging, can only fill in a few stations in California), and being slower.
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- AndrewBissell 6y agoThe 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-redwood-materials-recycling-expands-nevada.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/06/tesla-cto-jb-straubel-redwoo... What's new is Tim Higgins giving JB Straubel space in the pages of WSJ to run a PR campaign for his company.
- neonate 6y agohttps://archive.is/3LYRl https://archive.is/3LYRl
- monadic2 6y agoWhy 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.