In JB Straubel’s Redwood Materials, pallets of depleted lithium-ion batteries are prepared for recycling.
Source: CNBC
Tesla board member JB Straubel’s battery-recycling startup, Redwood Materials, has recently hired Colin Campbell, Tesla’s vice president of powertrain engineering, to serve as their chief technology officer.
Redwood, founded by Straubel in 2017 while he was still Tesla’s CTO, is based in Carson City, Nevada. Straubel left Tesla in 2019 to focus on Redwood.
Campbell announced his move to Redwood on LinkedIn, concluding his 17-year tenure at Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company. He expressed gratitude to his former Tesla colleagues for an exceptional experience.
At Redwood, Campbell will continue to work on electrification, this time by solving problems further upstream to ensure broad EV and clean energy adoption. Redwood aims to create a circular battery supply chain and localize the current fragmented system by manufacturing critical battery components at scale in the US, increasingly from recycled content.
Redwood repurposes end-of-life electric vehicle batteries and scrap from car factories to produce raw materials and components for new battery cells. The company also incorporates sustainably mined materials in its manufacturing processes.
This departure from Tesla follows the announcement that Zach Kirkhorn, Tesla’s finance chief, is stepping down and being replaced by Vaibhav Taneja, who now holds both the CFO and accounting roles.
Redwood has been successfully attracting top talent from Tesla for years. Kevin Kassekert, Redwood’s operating chief, previously served as vice president of people and places at Tesla. According to LinkedIn data, over 120 people who previously worked for Tesla are currently employed by Straubel’s company.
Straubel, credited as a co-founder of Tesla, was elected as an independent director on the automaker’s board this year.
Tesla has not yet responded to CNBC’s request for comment.
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