August 11, 2026 - Rivian Deploys Energy Storage With Redwood

This is the Telemetry Transportation Daily for August 11, 2026, and I'm Sam Abuelsamid, Vice President of Market Research for Telemetry. 

With the notable exception of the early Nissan Leaf air-cooled batteries, all the data over the past decade shows that EV batteries are lasting a lot longer than was anticipated in the late 2000s, when automakers first started going down the electric path. Data from Recurrent, which tracks battery health from connected EVs, shows that after 100,000 miles, the batteries typically retain between 88 and 95% of their original capacity. That means that when the rest of an EV reaches the end of its useful life, there is still plenty of useful life in that electrochemical lump for other use cases. Repurposing a battery from a vehicle into stationary energy storage isn't a new idea. GM did this with batteries from its first-gen Chevrolet Volt development fleet to power a data center at its proving ground. 

Redwood Materials, which started off focusing on battery recycling last year, expanded its business, building a scalable solution for energy storage systems from second-life batteries. It built its first system at its Nevada campus and now has two automakers signed on. General Motors is building a system with Redwood using the refurbished battery packs from its Chevrolet Bolt recall a few years ago and will deploy it at a Michigan manufacturing site. 

But the first company to actually deploy a system developed with Redwood is Rivian. Rivian and Redwood are taking 100 used R1 battery packs and assembling them into a 10 MWh storage system for the Normal, Illinois, assembly plant. The energy storage will help Rivian save money by shaving off electrical demand peaks from the grid, which lead to enormous additional charges from utilities for commercial customers. It's estimated that the U.S. will require 600 GWh of energy storage by 2030, and while cell manufacturers have pivoted many of their plants in this country from production for EVs to stationary storage, repurposing existing batteries is a great way to avoid the emissions and cost of building new. 

Thanks for listening.