Please show me the numbers.
You're an OK guy in my book. You grow epic weed. But on this, we disagree. The way the raw materials for a Tesla are obtained is a showcase of the worst imperialist tendencies of America. Like Big Rubber and banana republics. We need to move to a different technology. Fossil fuels don't have a future. Tesla tech is too politically and industrially dirty. I am confident that the future will hold a cleaner and less socially destructive technology. That is when I'll leave gassers and not look back.
In its latest environmental impact statement, Tesla announced that it will open its own battery recycling facility.
Tesla has been recycling batteries made at the factory using third-party recyclers. Now, as the earliest Model Ses reach 7 years old, and the company is starting to receive some batteries back after use in those early cars, it's setting up its own battery recycling facility.
The new processing center at the company's Gigafactory in Sparks, Nevada, will process both old batteries used in customers' Teslas as well as those from its own research and development.
The company says lithium, cobalt, aluminum, copper, and steel will be recovered from the batteries in a closed-loop system that optimizes the materials for new battery production.
It also says it expects to save money producing new batteries from the recycled materials, rather than buying new minerals for its batteries.
The new facility should also save significant expenses and pollution from shipping batteries overseas to be recycled, where many of the third-party recyclers are located.
"The closed-loop battery recycling process at Gigafactory 1 presents a compelling solution to move energy supply away from the fossil-fuel based practice of take, make, and burn to a more circular model of recycling end-of-life batteries for reuse over and over again," the company said in its environmental report.
How about your phone battery?
