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Agora Energy Technologies just won the 2021 Keeling Curve Prize for Capture & Utilization, sharing it with another firm this year. Earlier this year, it won first prize in the Hello Tomorrow global deeptech competition against 5,000 entrants from 128 countries. Agora’s technology is revolutionary, and the awards are well deserved. They picked up the Asian Alibaba Entrepreneur Fund Award in 2020, and the CEO, Christina Gyenge, PhD, is one of three 2021 Fellows in the Cartier Women’s Initiative science and technology global competition as well. As a result, they’ve been talking to global technology firms, and Canadian trade ambassadors for France and Hong Kong among others.

So, what is their award-winning technology, and what’s so great about it? For those interested in the deep electrochemistry, I recommend reading their peer-reviewed paper on their approach, The carbon dioxide redox flow battery: Bifunctional CO2 reduction/formate oxidation electrocatalysis on binary and ternary catalysts published May 31st, 2021 in the Journal of Power Sources (Impact factor: a very respectable 8.87 in 2021), but otherwise, here’s the low down.

Agora’s technology is a redox flow battery. That tech has been around for a while. NASA was working on them in the 1970s. The first one was stood up at the University of New South Wales, Australia in 1984, using the metal vanadium as a core component of its electrolyte. Commercial variants started appearing in the past decade, all using metals as the basis of their electrolytes. Bill Gates has invested in an iron-based one via Breakthrough, and it’s one of the few of his investments in climate solutions I consider to be a decent choice.

Where do redox flow batteries fit? I have an opinion, having gone deep on energy storage over the past few years, including a series on closed-loop, pumped storage hydro and looking at lithium-ion battery futures with a PhD student of Stanford’s Mark Z. Jacobson, as well as talking with Professor Jacobson directly about storage. In my opinion, lithium-ion in its various incarnations will deal with a lot of 4-8 hour demand management and ancillary grid balancing requirements, including some duck-curve issues. Redox flow batteries will compete a bit for same day storage, depending on the technology, and extend out for 1-3 days or even longer up to several weeks. Closed-loop, pumped hydro storage will mostly take over after 2-3 days and extend out to 2-3 week storage. A lot less storage is required than many people assert, but still a great deal of storage is required, and the solutions will overlap. In other words, redox flow batteries will be a big part of a big market.

Lithium-ion batteries are limited to short-term storage because their energy and power attributes scale in lockstep. The more MWh a lithium-ion battery can store, by definition the more MW it supplies. There are some hacks you can do with that, but effectively you get to a point where you don’t need that many MW at a time, so lithium-ion is unwieldy in the system. Great for demand management with the likely 20 TWh of lithium ion batteries in electric vehicles in the US alone by 2050 by my estimation, but that won’t help much for next day or next week storage.

Redox flow batteries dodge this. They use big tanks of chemicals separate from the bits that transform one type of chemical into another, storing the energy, or transforming it back or into something else, releasing the energy. That separates the power and energy attributes of the battery. You can scale up the MWh storage of the battery as much as you want, while maintaining the same MW of electricity capacity. They share that benefit with closed-loop, pumped storage hydro, but without the necessity to put 30-foot diameter tunnels through miles of rock.

Think of it like a car engine and a gas tank. The gas tank is the energy store, and determines how long you can drive for. The engine provides the horsepower, which says how much work you can do. Energy is MWh. Horsepower is MW. Lithium-ion batteries put both in a single package, and to get more energy, you have to add lots of both energy and power, meaning you end up with too much power a lot of the time. But redox flow batteries separate the gas tank and the engine, just like in car. That means you can get as much energy as you need, with only as much power as you need. And because they are stationary, you can make the gas tank as big as you want.

Not All Redox Flow Batteries Are Created Equal

Most of the technologies were patented decades ago. Except for Agora’s, they all use metals, often toxic ones, and usually expensive ones. They have weaknesses in terms of energy density or durability. The metals used for electrolytes and the semi-precious metals used for catalysts make them capital intensive. Many of the technologies have unsolved challenges. They are batteries, and that’s all they are. Many are good, but aren’t amazing. And they are comparatively expensive.

Then there’s Agora’s solution. First, the team.

The co-founders are Christina Gyenge and Elod Gyenge, both PhDs. Christina is CEO and in addition to her chemical engineering PhD has done post-doctoral work at Stanford and multi-disciplinary work across biology and biological systems chemical and energy engineering. Elod is the President of the company and CSO as well as a professor of chemical engineering at UBC. He is a leader in electrochemical engineering research and has been recognized with numerous international awards and honors. Elod has extensive industrial experience and has collaborated with Ballard and Fortune 500 companies on chemical engineering around fuel cells and related technologies. The Director of R&D at Agora is Dr. Pooya Hosseini-Benhangi. Pooya obtained his PhD at UBC in Elod’s group and has also spent time applying electrochemistry to gold mineral processing as a post-doctoral fellow. The core redox flow battery innovations are protected by patents in various stages of finalization in 52 countries, with the Israeli patent just awarded. Several electrochemical and chemical engineers round out the mix.

Christina and Elod started working in this space in 2012. They have three primary innovations that are unique as far as I am aware. 

The first is that they are using gaseous CO2 in the charging phase in a hybrid gas-liquid redox flow battery. Reversing it in the closed-loop model produces CO2 again, unpacking the energy. A major advantage of this is that CO2 and the other chemicals are cheap, non-toxic and common, unlike the metal-based electrolytes of vanadium and other metal-based redox batteries. As with many fields, paradigms are hard to dig out of, and batteries being metal-based is one of those tough paradigms. The closed-loop battery model doesn’t consume the CO2, but CO2 is very cheap by the ton, $30-$100, making the economics of this approach better than metal-based batteries, where the metals often cost thousands or tens of thousands of dollars per ton. Their work on CO2 gas diffusion exchange is cutting edge, well ahead of most others, and a massive technical differentiator as well as a strong value add.

The second deep insight is their catalyst. It’s a core part of their intellectual capital that they are protecting for a simple reason. The catalyst is a cheap and common substance, overcoming a different challenge for many other flow batteries and fuel cells, which typically use semi-precious metals such as platinum, which typically range from $30 – $60 per gram. While little of the precious metals is used per cell, when you start multiplying by thousands of cells, it starts to add up quickly.

But the biggest one in my opinion is the open-loop model. A closed-loop model transforms the CO2 from one chemistry to another, and then back. In the open-loop model when the energy is extracted, the CO2-based chemicals are transformed to carbonates or bicarbonates.

Why is that important? Well, there are a few reasons. The first is that carbonates and bicarbonates are big business. My assessment sees a $44 billion annual market for the chemicals that Agora’s tech can produce from waste CO2 and clean electricity. The second is that this displaces the Solvay process. I’ve looked at that industrial process, just as I’ve looked at cement production, and Agora’s approach is so much cleaner it’s painful. The Solvay process produces a net 2.74 tons of CO2 per tons of bicarbonates produced in the 1870s chemical process involving ammonia, heating with natural gas, and cooling in different steps. Every box of baking soda you’ve ever bought comes with an invisible 3 boxes of CO2 by mass, in other words. More on this in the next article.

In Agora’s process, lower-cost renewably generated electricity flows in at night or other times of day when it happens to be cheap, the process runs at room temperature, and no ammonia is involved. You could put Agora’s tech in a light-industrial building downtown and no one would notice. The third is that it consumes waste CO2, instead of producing a lot of CO2 as the Solvay process does. This is one of the few carbon usage models that makes fiscal and technical sense, and fits as an industrial component of the future. I know, I’ve spent a lot of time assessing carbon capture and industrial processes’ CO2 footprints.

Lazard unsubsidized levelized cost of storage with Agora's technology annotated

Lazard unsubsidized levelized cost of storage with Agora’s technology annotated

But it’s the combination that’s key. It’s a battery. Shove renewable electricity into it, and get clean electricity back. Lots of tech does that. However, Agora’s tech has excellent energy density, and great durability too. It can store a lot of electricity for the mass and cycle it a lot of times. Using CO2 instead of metals makes it a lot cheaper. And their catalyst being cheap due to the chemistry makes it even cheaper. 

Relative ROI for different battery technologies

Relative ROI for different battery technologies by author

Those basic factors make it cheaper than most other forms of storage automatically. Cheaper to build. Cheaper to operate. Lower cost storage. Agora has done four fiscal case studies with LafargeHolcim for the technology applied to wind energy grid balancing and an integrated low-carbon cement plant of the future, so the numbers have been scrubbed backward and forward. 

And the kicker is the carbonate and bicarbonate production. It consumes waste CO2. It produces useful chemicals. Bicarbonates are in lots of things. Food. Toothpaste. Antacids. And they are worth from $200 – $600 per ton, depending on the chemistry and the purity. Imagine a battery that lasts a long time, eats CO2, and produces useful industrial chemicals. It’s a trifecta. 

Chart of relative carbon neutrality of different battery technologies chart

Chart of relative carbon neutrality of different battery technologies chart by author

These battery technology comparison charts are early and indicative, not late, based on rock solid numbers, or seriously reviewed. I pulled them together based on discussions, but they haven’t been validated. My gut tells me that they are close to right in terms of scale, but there’s more work to do on them. And more variants of these assessments to produce. No wonder Hello Tomorrow, the Keeling Curve Prize Team and the Cartier’s Womens Initiative picked Agora. I saw this 20 months ago. The Agora team saw this close to a decade ago.

Their solution isn’t a thornless bed of roses, of course. 

The CO2 is transformed into an acid on the way through the process into the storage medium, so that requires care in handling. The set of chemicals include bromine variants. While bromine is an essential trace element in human biology, as with dihydrogen monoxide too much is lethal. The toxicity of the bromine is a concern that must be managed. Other alternatives are less efficient.

Technology readiness levels

Technology readiness levels courtesy NASA

They are at lab efficiency levels right now. While projections indicate that they will get over 80% in terms of round-trip storage, this hasn’t been demonstrated. They are at the MVP stage or technology level four, and need to build a scaled prototype. That’s going to take 2-3 years, and another few million dollars.

They aren’t a manufacturing and distribution firm or a chemical commodity firm, but a technical innovation firm. They need a global manufacturing partner and a chemical commodity partner. Firms like that have been knocking on their door a lot in the past couple of years, and a lot more with the various prizes this year.

Agora’s CO2-based redox flow batteries will be a core technology assisting us to bend the Keeling Curve back down. Hello Tomorrow indeed.

Full disclosure. I have a professional relationship with Agora as a strategic advisor and Board observer. I did an initial strategy session with Agora about their redox flow battery technology in late 2019 and was blown away by what they had in hand, and my formal role with the firm started at the beginning of 2021. I commit to being as objective and honest as always, but be aware of my affiliation.

 

 
 

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Upcoming electric Bentley blends 1930s style with 2030s tech

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Upcoming electric Bentley blends 1930s style with 2030s tech

British ultra-luxe brand Bentley is teasing the upcoming, first-ever all electric model that will take it into the 2030s with a new concept car inspired by the iconic 1930 “Blue Train” Speed Six coupe – and it looks fantastic!

More than any other brand, Bentley was defined by its engine. For decades, in fact, the only meaningful mechanical difference between a Rolls-Royce and a Bentley was the 6.75L twin-turbocharged V8 engine under the flying B hood ornament.

That all changed at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Rolls-Royce was acquired by BMW, while Volkswagen took the reins at Bentley, setting both brands on distinct paths. Now, without its own engine, Bentley faces the challenge of proving to discerning buyers that its cars justify a premium over its mechanical cousins at VW, Audi, and Porsche. That’s why the company is looking to it pre-Rolls merger past, all the way back to the legendary 1930 “Blue Train” Speed Six coupe.

Bentley Blue Train EXP 15 concept


EXP 15 concept and 1930 Blue Train; via Bentley.

“Bentley’s then-chairman Woolf Barnato had a Speed Six four-door Weymann fabric saloon by H J Mulliner, which he used to race the Blue Train in 1930,” explains Darren Day, Bentley’s Head of Interior Design. “Meanwhile, he had a unique one-of-one Speed Six coupe being built, with a body by Gurney Nutting. Even though the coupe wasn’t finished when the race took place, it’s that car (the coupe) that’s become associated with it and has since become an iconic Bentley. What we were influenced by is the idea of a three-seat car with a unique window line and super slick proportions used for grand tours.”

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The EXP 15 concept car features a unique, three-door, three-passenger layout under a sweeping, dramatic roofline lifted from the 1930 tourer. “The seat can rotate and you step out, totally unflustered, not trying to clamber out of the car like you see with some supercars,” continued Day, before dropping the biggest hint yet as to who they’re building the car for. “You just get out with dignity and the Instagram shot is perfect.”

Bentley EXP 15 interior


While almost no technical specs have been revealed other than “full electric,” Bentley says its new concept’s innovative interior layout allows passengers to stretch out in comfort alongside accessible storage compartments that can house a bar, hand luggage, or even pets. The EXP 15 even offers tailgate seating for outdoor parties or suburban soccer games.

But, while the new concept is tall, Bentley hopes it manages to offer the commanding driving position and comfort of an SUV while giving off the “vibe” of a classic grand tourer – something Bentley thinks could be the next wave of the luxury car market.

“The beauty of a concept car is not just to position our new design language, but to test where the market’s going,” offers Robin Page, Bentley Director of Design. “It’s clear that SUVs are a growing segment and we understand the GT market … but the trickiest segment is the sedan because it’s changing. Some customers want a classic ‘three-box’ sedan shape, others a ‘one-box’ design, and others again something more elevated. So this was a chance for us to talk to people and get a feeling.”

As before: no specs, no range estimates, and no promises about if and nothing definitive about when the oft-promised all-electric Bentley will finally bow – but this is certain: when it does arrive, it will be big, brash, and fast.

Electrek’s Take


Now that SUVs are everywhere and in every segment, automakers are desperate to explore or open new niches, hoping to find that next “SUV-like” growth segment. As weird as the three-door, three-seat EXP 15’s interior layout is, you have to admit that it’s different. And, for a vehicle that spends 90% of its time with just one person inside it, it might be more than practical enough.

Let us know if you think Bentley has a winner, or just another concept car gimmick on its hands in the comments.

SOURCE | IMAGES: Bentley.


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In rare earth metals power struggle with China, old laptops, phones may get a new life

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In rare earth metals power struggle with China, old laptops, phones may get a new life

A stack of old mobile phones are seen before recycling process in Kocaeli, Turkiye on October 14, 2024.

Anadolu | Anadolu | Getty Images

As the U.S. and China vie for economic, technological and geopolitical supremacy, the critical elements and metals embedded in technology from consumer to industrial and military markets have become a pawn in the wider conflict. That’s nowhere more so the case than in China’s leverage over the rare earth metals supply chain. This past week, the Department of Defense took a large equity stake in MP Materials, the company running the only rare earths mining operation in the U.S.

But there’s another option to combat the rare earths shortage that goes back to an older idea: recycling. The business has come a long way from collecting cans, bottles, plastic, newspaper and other consumer disposables, otherwise destined for landfills, to recreate all sorts of new products.

Today, next-generation recyclers — a mix of legacy companies and startups — are innovating ways to gather and process the ever-growing mountains of electronic waste, or e-waste, which comprises end-of-life and discarded computers, smartphones, servers, TVs, appliances, medical devices, and other electronics and IT equipment. And they are doing so in a way that is aligned to the newest critical technologies in society. Most recently, spent EV batteries, wind turbines and solar panels are fostering a burgeoning recycling niche.

The e-waste recycling opportunity isn’t limited to rare earth elements. Any electronics that can’t be wholly refurbished and resold, or cannibalized for replacement parts needed to keep existing electronics up and running, can berecycled to strip out gold, silver, copper, nickel, steel, aluminum, lithium, cobalt and other metals vital to manufacturers in various industries. But increasingly, recyclers are extracting rare-earth elements, such as neodymium, praseodymium, terbium and dysprosium, which are critical in making everything from fighter jets to power tools.

“Recycling [of e-waste] hasn’t been taken too seriously until recently” as a meaningful source of supply, said Kunal Sinha, global head of recycling at Swiss-based Glencore, a major miner, producer and marketer of metals and minerals — and, to a much lesser but growing degree, an e-waste recycler. “A lot of people are still sleeping at the wheel and don’t realize how big this can be,” Sinha said. 

Traditionally, U.S. manufacturers purchase essential metals and rare earths from domestic and foreign producers — an inordinate number based in China — that fabricate mined raw materials, or through commodities traders. But with those supply chains now disrupted by unpredictable tariffs, trade policies and geopolitics, the market for recycled e-waste is gaining importance as a way to feed the insatiable electrification of everything.

“The United States imports a lot of electronics, and all of that is coming with gold and aluminum and steel,” said John Mitchell, president and CEO of the Global Electronics Association, an industry trade group. “So there’s a great opportunity to actually have the tariffs be an impetus for greater recycling in this country for goods that we don’t have, but are buying from other countries.”

With copper, other metals, ‘recycling is going to play huge role’

Although recycling contributes only around $200 million to Glencore’s total EBITDA of nearly $14 billion, the strategic attention and time the business gets from leadership “is much more than that percentage,” Sinha said. “We believe that a lot of mining is necessary to get to all the copper, gold and other metals that are needed, but we also recognize that recycling is going to play a huge role,” he said.

Glencore has operated a huge copper smelter in Quebec, Canada, for almost  20 years on a site that’s nearly 100-years-old. The facility processes mostly mined copper concentrates, though 15% of its feedstock is recyclable materials, such as e-waste that Glencore’s global network of 100-plus suppliers collect and sort. The smelter pioneered the process for recovering copper and precious metals from e-waste in the mid 1980s, making it one of the first and largest of its type in the world. The smelted copper is refined into fresh slabs that are sold to manufacturers and traders. The same facility also produces refined gold, silver, platinum and palladium recovered from recycling feeds. 

The importance of copper to OEMs’ supply chains was magnified in early July, when prices hit an all-time high after President Trump said he would impose a 50% tariff on imports of the metal. The U.S. imports just under half of its copper, and the tariff hike — like other new Trump trade policies — is intended to boost domestic production.

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Price of copper year-to-date 2025.

It takes around three decades for a new mine in the U.S. to move from discovery to production, which makes recycled copper look all the more attractive, especially as demand keeps rising. According to estimates by energy-data firm Wood Mackenzie, 45% of demand will be met with recycled copper by 2050, up from about a third today.

Foreign recycling companies have begun investing in the U.S.-based facilities. In 2022, Germany’s Wieland broke ground on a $100-million copper and copper alloy recycling plant in Shelbyville, Kentucky. Last year, another German firm, Aurubis, started construction on an $800-million multi-metal recycling facility in Augusta, Georgia.

“As the first major secondary smelter of its kind in the U.S., Aurubis Richmond will allow us to keep strategically important metals in the economy, making U.S. supply chains more independent,” said Aurubis CEO Toralf Haag.

Massive amounts of e-waste

The proliferation of e-waste can be traced back to the 1990s, when the internet gave birth to the digital economy, spawning exponential growth in electronically enabled products. The trend has been supercharged by the emergence of renewable energy, e-mobility, artificial intelligence and the build-out of data centers. That translates to a constant turnover of devices and equipment, and massive amounts of e-waste.

In 2022, a record 62 million metric tons of e-waste were produced globally, up 82% from 2010, according to the most recent estimates from the United Nations’ International Telecommunications Union and research arm UNITAR. That number is projected to reach 82 million metric tons by 2030.

The U.S., the report said, produced just shy of 8 million tons of e-waste in 2022. Yet only about 15-20% of it is properly recycled, a figure that illustrates the untapped market for e-waste retrievables. The e-waste recycling industry generated $28.1 billion in revenue in 2024, according to IBISWorld, with a projected compound annual growth rate of 8%.

Whether it’s refurbished and resold or recycled for metals and rare-earths, e-waste that stores data — especially smartphones, computers, servers and some medical devices — must be wiped of sensitive information to comply with cybersecurity and environmental regulations. The service, referred to as IT asset disposition (ITAD), is offered by conventional waste and recycling companies, including Waste Management, Republic Services and Clean Harbors, as well as specialists such as Sims Lifecycle Services, Electronic Recyclers International, All Green Electronics Recycling and Full Circle Electronics.

“We’re definitely seeing a bit of an influx of [e-waste] coming into our warehouses,” said Full Circle Electronics CEO Dave Daily, adding, “I think that is due to some early refresh cycles.”

That’s a reference to businesses and consumers choosing to get ahead of the customary three-year time frame for purchasing new electronics, and discarding old stuff, in anticipation of tariff-related price increases.

Daily also is witnessing increased demand among downstream recyclers for e-waste Full Circle Electronics can’t refurbish and sell at wholesale. The company dismantles and separates it into 40 or 50 different types of material, from keyboards and mice to circuit boards, wires and cables. Recyclers harvest those items for metals and rare earths, which continue to go up in price on commodities markets, before reentering the supply chain as core raw materials.

Even before the Trump administration’s efforts to revitalize American manufacturing by reworking trade deals, and recent changes in tax credits key to the industry in Trump’s tax and spending bill, entrepreneurs have been launching e-waste recycling startups and developing technologies to process them for domestic OEMs.

“Many regions of the world have been kind of lazy about processing e-waste, so a lot of it goes offshore,” Sinha said. In response to that imbalance, “There seems to be a trend of nationalizing e-waste, because people suddenly realize that we have the same metals [they’ve] been looking for” from overseas sources, he said. “People have been rethinking the global supply chain, that they’re too long and need to be more localized.” 

China commands 90% of rare earth market

Several startups tend to focus on a particular type of e-waste. Lately, rare earths have garnered tremendous attention, not just because they’re in high demand by U.S. electronics manufacturers but also to lessen dependence on China, which dominates mining, processing and refining of the materials. In the production of rare-earth magnets — used in EVs, drones, consumer electronics, medical devices, wind turbines, military weapons and other products — China commands roughly 90% of the global supply chain.

The lingering U.S.–China trade war has only exacerbated the disparity. In April, China restricted exports of seven rare earths and related magnets in retaliation for U.S. tariffs, a move that forced Ford to shut down factories because of magnet shortages. China, in mid-June, issued temporary six-month licenses to certain major U.S. automaker suppliers and select firms. Exports are flowing again, but with delays and still well below peak levels.

The U.S. is attempting to catch up. Before this past week’s Trump administration deal, the Biden administration awarded $45 million in funding to MP Materials and the nation’s lone rare earths mine, in Mountain Pass, California. Back in April, the Interior Department approved development activities at the Colosseum rare earths project, located within California’s Mojave National Preserve. The project, owned by Australia’s Dateline Resources, will potentially become America’s second rare earth mine after Mountain Pass. 

A wheel loader takes ore to a crusher at the MP Materials rare earth mine in Mountain Pass, California, U.S. January 30, 2020. Picture taken January 30, 2020.

Steve Marcus | Reuters

Meanwhile, several recycling startups are extracting rare earths from e-waste. Illumynt has an advanced process for recovering them from decommissioned hard drives procured from data centers. In April, hard drive manufacturer Western Digital announced a collaboration with Microsoft, Critical Materials Recycling and PedalPoint Recycling to pull rare earths, as well as copper, gold, aluminum and steel, from end-of-life drives.

Canadian-based Cyclic Materials invented a process that recovers rare-earths and other metals from EV motors, wind turbines, MRI machines and data-center e-scrap. The company is investing more than $20 million to build its first U.S.-based facility in Mesa, Arizona. Late last year, Glencore signed a multiyear agreement with Cyclic to provide recycled copper for its smelting and refining operations.

Another hot feedstock for e-waste recyclers is end-of-life lithium-ion batteries, a source of not only lithium but also copper, cobalt, nickel, manganese and aluminum. Those materials are essential for manufacturing new EV batteries, which the Big Three automakers are heavily invested in. Their projects, however, are threatened by possible reductions in the Biden-era 45X production tax credit, featured in the new federal spending bill.

It’s too soon to know how that might impact battery recyclers — including Ascend Elements, American Battery Technology, Cirba Solutions and Redwood Materials — who themselves qualify for the 45X and other tax credits. They might actually be aided by other provisions in the budget bill that benefit a domestic supply chain of critical minerals as a way to undercut China’s dominance of the global market.

Nonetheless, that looming uncertainty should be a warning sign for e-waste recyclers, said Sinha. “Be careful not to build a recycling company on the back of one tax credit,” he said, “because it can be short-lived.”

Investing in recyclers can be precarious, too, Sinha said. While he’s happy to see recycling getting its due as a meaningful source of supply, he cautions people to be careful when investing in this space. Startups may have developed new technologies, but lack good enough business fundamentals. “Don’t invest on the hype,” he said, “but on the fundamentals.”

Glencore, ironically enough, is a case in point. It has invested $327.5 million in convertible notes in battery recycler Li-Cycle to provide feedstock for its smelter. The Toronto-based startup had broken ground on a new facility in Rochester, New York, but ran into financial difficulties and filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy protection in May, prompting Glencore to submit a “stalking horse” credit bid of at least $40 million for the stalled project and other assets.

Even so, “the current environment will lead to more startups and investments” in e-waste recycling, Sinha said. “We are investing ourselves.”

MP Materials CEO on deal with the Defense Department

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LiveWire gives surprise unveil of two smaller, lower-cost electric motorcycles

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LiveWire gives surprise unveil of two smaller, lower-cost electric motorcycles

LiveWire, the electric motorcycle company that was spun out of Harley-Davidson several years ago, has just shown off two fun-sized electric motorcycles designed to make powered two-wheelers more accessible to new riders, both physically and financially.

The company took to HD Homecoming, a motorcycle festival in Milwaukee, to give a surprise unveiling of the new bikes.

The bikes, which wear what look to be smaller 12″ tires and offer a barely 30″ (76 cm) seat height, are smaller and nimbler than anything we’ve seen from LiveWire before.

But that doesn’t mean they can’t perform. These aren’t some 30 mph (48 km/h) mopeds. LiveWire confirmed that early testing shows respectable performance figures of around 53 mph (85 km/h) speeds and 100 miles (160 km) of range from the pair of removable batteries.

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I’m assuming that range is measured at a lower urban speed, but these appear to be purpose-built to give riders the capability to ride where and how they want at a much more affordable price than LiveWire has ever offered.

Showing off both a trail and a street version, the LiveWire seems to be covering all of its bases.

“The trail model is intended for riding backyards, pump tracks, or even out on the ranch or campgrounds,” the brand explained. “The street model is perfect for urban errands, new riders, mini-moto fans, and anyone looking for a new hobby in the form of a readily customizable, approachable electric moto experience.”

LiveWire hasn’t shared any pricing details yet, and the two models are understood to still be in their development phase, but the advanced stages of the designs mean we likely won’t have to wait too much longer.

And with most of LiveWire’s current electric motorcycle models in the $16k- $17k, these bikes could conceivably cost less than half of that figure, changing the equation for young riders who can’t afford a luxury ride.

Electrek’s Take

Of course, they had to do this unveiling at the exact time that I was banging out a multi-thousand-word treatise bemoaning the fact that LiveWire hadn’t launched any smaller models yet. Hmmm, maybe it’s time for an article about how the e-bike industry needs a single battery standard.

Anyway, I’m all-in on this! I can’t even describe how excited this news makes me! This is an important step for LiveWire’s growth because the kind of folks who are drawn to electric motorcycles are often a different market than that sought by traditional legacy motorcycle manufacturers. LiveWire’s existing models are impressive, both in their extreme performance and their design, but they’re still powerhouses that provide more kick than most riders probably need.

These new mini e-motos could be exactly what new riders are looking for. Consider all the teens and young adults ripping it up on Sur Rons in towns across the US right now. Those Sur Rons aren’t street-legal bikes and they were never meant for the riding they’re most commonly being used for. But a street bike in a fun little Grom form factor like LiveWire is showing off? It could scratch that itch and also provide riders with the safety and support of a motorcycle company that comes from a storied history of over 100 years of motorcycle design, all from a new brand like LiveWire that speaks young riders’ language.

And that trail version – same thing. It’s going to offer the fun off-road riding that so many are looking for, yet do it in a well-designed package that isn’t just produced by some nameless factory in China trying to eke out the best profit margin.

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