Redwood Materials, the battery recycling company founded by a former Tesla executive, announced today that it will build a massive $3.5 billion facility in South Carolina.
The 600-acre plant, which will be located just outside Charleston “in the heart of the ‘Battery Belt,’” will employ approximately 1,500 people over 10 years and will produce 100 GWh of cathode and anode components annually, Redwood said. Ground will be broken on the new factory in the first quarter of 2023, with an eye toward initiating the first recycling process by the end of the year.
Those components are not currently manufactured in North America, forcing automakers to source most of the materials needed for electric vehicle batteries from overseas. That has had…