What do you do with an EV battery that's past its prime? If you're Rivian, you put it back to work - this time powering the very factory that made it.
The electric automaker is rolling out a system at its Illinois plant that will use more than 100 retired EV batteries to help run the facility, according to Fast Company. It's a genuinely elegant idea: batteries that are no longer up to the demands of life inside a vehicle still have plenty of capacity left for stationary energy storage.
Where do the old batteries come from?
Rivian is working with Redwood Materials, a company founded by former Tesla executive JB Straubel that specialises in battery recycling and now, second-life energy storage. Redwood takes old or discarded EV batteries - in this case, pulled from Rivian's own vehicles - and redeploys them in grid-connected systems.
Rivian is among the first customers of Redwood's new energy storage business, which puts it at the leading edge of what could become a major industry trend. As millions of EVs age and eventually need battery replacements, the question of what happens to those packs is becoming increasingly urgent. This kind of second-life approach offers a compelling answer.
Why this is smarter than it sounds
The practical upside here is real. By storing energy when electricity is cheap and abundant - think overnight, or during periods of high renewable output - and drawing on it during peak hours when prices spike, Rivian can meaningfully reduce its electricity bills. For a manufacturing plant running heavy machinery around the clock, those savings add up fast.
But beyond the balance sheet, there's a bigger point. Battery production is one of the most resource-intensive parts of making an EV. Extending the useful life of each pack - first in a car, then in a building - stretches those resources much further and delays the energy and cost of full recycling or disposal.
A model worth watching
This kind of closed-loop thinking, where a company takes responsibility for its products well beyond the point of sale, is exactly what more sustainable manufacturing needs to look like. Rivian sourcing its own factory power from its own old batteries is almost poetic in its logic.
As battery storage becomes a bigger part of how we manage energy on the grid, expect to see more automakers explore similar arrangements. Rivian and Redwood Materials are just early movers in what could become a standard part of the EV lifecycle.
