Tesla Cofounder Is Building A $3.5 Billion Plant To Make EV Battery Parts In The U.S.

Through the end of the decade, a $3.5 billion plant will be built in Nevada to make components for electric vehicle batteries. The first such facility in the U.S. will be able to provide material for 1 million electric vehicles annually.

A year ago the company said it would build a $1 billion facility to process materials. A spokeswoman for the company said that it is building a plant on 175 acres near its recycling facilities. The plant will be able to produce five times the amount of batteries in the next ten years. Panasonic will be a primary customer of the company.

Georgeson said that Redwood wants to open more U.S. plants to take the lead in the first large-scale cathode production operations in the U.S. She refused to say where additional funds will come from.

She said that production of copper foil would ramp up to 100 gigawatt hours by the year 2025. Most of the materials used in a battery cell factory are made in the U.S.

China, South Korea and Japan are the main producers of EV batteries and materials. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law was used to allocate $3.1 billion of funds for domestic production. GM said in March that it would produce cathodes in Canada with South Korea's Posco Chemical, and over the past year companies have announced billions of dollars in investment in new factories to make batteries.

The raw materials it needs to make batteries will come from both its recycling operations and commodity suppliers. The positive terminal of a battery is where atoms get electrons.

The company is focused on finding sustainable ways to make EV batteries, given the tight global supplies of some of the materials. Following similar partnerships with Toyota, Ford, Volvo Cars, electric truck and bus maker Proterra and bicycle maker Specialized, Redwood collaborated with Volkswagen andAudi in the US to recover material from spent battery packs. It claims to be the largest electronics waste consolidator in North America.

Musk invested in the electric-car maker's first phase. He oversaw the development of its battery packs and electric motor until he left the company.

Ford, Fidelity, Bill Gates, and Amazon all invested in the funding round. The company hasn't given any revenue details.

The Wall Street Journal reported on the plan.