Panasonic Strikes a Multibillion-Dollar Deal with Redwood Materials

Panasonic Energy of North America, the largest supplier of battery cells for electric vehicles in the U.S., has struck a deal with Nevada-based battery recycling company Redwood Materials to buy a key material for the production of batteries.

Redwood Materials, which will supply high-nickel cathode to Panasonic Energy starting in 2025, says the agreement is worth billions of dollars, but declined to give an exact figure. 

“I think it’s a bigger deal than is immediately obvious to most people just because no one really sees or is familiar with what a cathode material is or where it goes,” said Redwood Materials Founder and CEO JB Straubel, who was Tesla’s chief technology officer until 2019, and helped invent a lot of the core technology used by the electric vehicle maker. “It (cathode material) may be around fifty percent of the cost of the battery.”

Read the source article at cnbc.com