Tesla cofounder JB Straubel served as the brains behind the battery development for the electric vehicle giant, and he saw firsthand the massive amounts of critical minerals that are potentially wasted when it comes time to retire each EV—raw materials ripe for recycling and redeploying.
China dominates most of the world’s critical mineral supply chains. Each EV battery represents a treasure trove of lithium, cobalt, copper, nickel, and more that can be reused for brand-new batteries for energy storage and all sorts of devices from AI data centers to military equipment to smartphones and computers. There are 60 natural elements deemed “critical minerals” by the U.S. government, and America only produces a small minority of them.
