Rivian Turns Old EV Batteries Into Power for Illinois Plant

Your old electric car battery might not be headed for the recycling bin after all. It could end up powering the very factory that builds the next generation of EVs.

Rivian just announced a partnership with Redwood Materials to build a 10 megawatt-hour energy storage system at its manufacturing plant in Normal, Illinois. The system stitches together more than 100 used Rivian battery packs that still have plenty of life left in them.

The setup is the first of its kind at a U.S. auto plant. Instead of recycling batteries from warranty returns and test vehicles, Rivian is putting them to work storing electricity and feeding power back to the factory during peak demand hours.

For Rivian, the timing couldn't be better. The company is ramping up production of its new R2 vehicle alongside its R1S and R1T models, which means the factory needs more electricity than ever. The battery storage system lets them avoid expensive peak electricity rates and keep production humming even when the local grid is stressed.

Redwood Materials, founded by former Tesla CTO JB Straubel, handles the technical challenge of making batteries with different chemistries and wear levels work together as one system. Their software manages the whole array like a single giant battery.

The partnership solves a problem every EV maker will eventually face. As electric vehicles age, their batteries lose some capacity but often remain perfectly capable of handling less demanding jobs. Sending them straight to recycling wastes valuable energy storage potential.

Straubel left Tesla in 2019 to focus on Redwood, betting that used EV batteries could become a major energy resource. His company has already built a 63 megawatt-hour system in Nevada using nearly 800 second-life battery packs to power an AI data center.

The Ripple Effect

This deal signals something bigger than one factory's power bill. The U.S. needs more than 600 gigawatt-hours of energy storage by 2030 to handle growing electricity demand from data centers, factories, and the shift away from fossil fuels.

Building that much new battery capacity would take years. But hundreds of thousands of EV batteries already exist in cars on the road today, and thousands more come out of service every month as the first generation of electric vehicles ages.

Redwood recently signed a similar agreement with General Motors to repurpose GM's EV batteries for grid storage. Together with Rivian, that gives the company access to a growing supply of domestic batteries at a time when building new energy storage can't happen fast enough.

For Rivian, the system also means cleaner operations. Instead of pulling more power from the grid during expensive peak hours, the factory can rely on stored energy from batteries that might otherwise be sitting in a warehouse.

The initial 10 megawatt-hour installation is small compared to what's possible, but it proves the concept works in a real manufacturing environment where reliability matters.

Old batteries getting a second career powering the factories that build new ones feels like the kind of circular solution we need more of.