Here’s how EV batteries can be given a second life

Published

2 years ago

March 29, 2023

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Over 300 million electric vehicles are expected to be on the world’s roads by 2030, according to the International Energy Agency. However, the American EV market is small. In 2021, the U.S. accounted for less than 10% of new global EV registrations, while China and Europe accounted for 50% and 35%, respectively. China also accounts for over 70% of global EV battery production capacity, meaning the U.S. is heavily dependent on imports of batteries and battery minerals.

“It has been clear since 2014 that China had a plan to lock up the bulk of the world’s production of battery minerals,” said John Voelcker, an EV analyst. “The world’s largest battery company is now in China.”

By 2050, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory expects the demand for graphite, lithium and cobalt, all critical minerals in EV batteries, to increase by 500%. It estimates that the lifetime of an EV battery is around 12 to 15 years in moderate climates.

“The degradation of an EV battery pack is one of the biggest questions of the industry,” said Lea Malloy, head of electric vehicle battery solutions at Cox Automotive Mobility. “Every battery will reach the end of life. It’s important that these end-of-life packs are recycled, so they don’t end up where they don’t belong.”

With the estimated reuse lifetime of an EV battery ranging anywhere between five to 30 years, extending the life cycle could reduce the need for mining critical minerals. Companies like American Battery Technology have already developed processes to recycle lithium-ion batteries, but Oklahoma-based Spiers New Technologies or SNT is pioneering a different process.

“It’s fantastic that you can drive an electric vehicle, knowing that the end-of-the life of that battery pack, the ingredients will be reused in a new battery pack and a new electric car, and that we really want to play a role in,” said Dirk Spiers, founder and CEO of SNT.

SNT was founded in 2014 with just two employees. In 2021, it was acquired by Cox Automotive, a subsidiary of Atlanta-based media conglomerate Cox Enterprises. The company now has over 400 employees and offers what it calls a “one-stop solution” for used and faulty EV batteries.

“We are like a diner of battery services,” said Spiers. “You can come to us for a cup of coffee, but if you want to have a steak, a cup of soup or apple pie, we serve all these things.”

The company receives EV batteries directly from the dealership or original equipment manufacturer. It then puts the battery packs through its diagnosis system, named Alfred. Alfred assesses the health of the battery pack to determine whether it can eventually go back into a vehicle. A pack can be repaired to operational conditions, remanufactured to original factory standards, refurbished and upgraded to current factory standards. If truly at its end-of-life, SNT will recycle it.

“A couple of years ago there was a cost associated with recycling a lithium-ion battery pack. Now it is a positive,” he said. “If you give me a lithium-ion battery pack, I probably will give you money back for it. And that’s the beauty of it. The intrinsic value of that battery pack is higher than the cost of recycling.”

In addition to its Oklahoma City-based headquarters, SNT also has facilities in Las Vegas, Detroit and the Netherlands with plans to expand to the east coast and the U.K. Right now it says being centrally located in the U.S. is key to its business model.

“We need to be where our customers are, being bang in the middle of the country helps. We can reach either cost between two and three days,” Spiers said.

The company wouldn’t disclose the number of battery packs it’s capable of storing but said it handles on average 15 thousand battery packs and modules per month.

“We get anything from, say, 50 to 100 battery packs per day. Probably 80, 90% can be refurbished. Recycling is maybe 5 to 10%. And the rest is repurposing, second life. But those numbers will fluctuate,” he said.

Since its inception, SNT says it’s serviced more than 240 thousand packs and more than 50 thousand have been repaired, refurbished or remanufactured.

“If you look at the EV market and take Tesla out, we probably have 60, 65, 70% of that market,” said Spiers. “GM, Ford, Stellantis, Porsche, Volkswagen, Nissan, Toyota, Volvo we keep adding to the list.”

But, why doesn’t it work with Tesla, the most recognizable American EV company?

“They like to do their own stuff. You know, they’re a little bit like Apple,” he said.

“When I think about the future of EV battery recycling specifically, I see it as an increasingly competitive space,” Malloy said. “At the same time, there is a bit of a mismatch of maybe more supply and capacity around EV battery recycling than demand. We’re just riding this first wave of electric vehicles who could be on the road for ten-plus years.”

With the world having a finite amount of minerals necessary for EV batteries, could it reach a point of indefinite cycling and reuse?

“I think we will be mining metals for the balance of my lifetime,” said Voelcker. “The hope is as batteries get more powerful, smaller, lighter and cheaper, with luck, we will need fewer metals.”

“Why would you get cobalt from Africa or lithium from South America, if you can get it here in Oklahoma City,” Spiers said. “The circular economy is happening. It’s happening right now. It’s happening here in Oklahoma City…the volume is still small, but it will get bigger and bigger.”

Technology

Ether rises to a fresh record, bitcoin erases gains from Jackson Hole rally

Published

5 hours ago

August 24, 2025

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Ether rises to a fresh record, bitcoin erases gains from Jackson Hole rally

Jakub Porzycki | NurPhoto | Getty Images

Ether rose to a new record over the weekend, after hitting an all-time high Friday for the first time since 2021.

The price of the second largest cryptocurrency rose as high as $4,954.81 on Sunday afternoon. It was last higher by less than 1% at $4,776.46.

Meanwhile, bitcoin at one point erased all the gains from its Friday rally, falling as low as $110,779.01, its lowest level since July 10. It was last trading lower by nearly 2% at about $112,000. The flagship cryptocurrency hit its most recent record of $124,496 on Aug. 13.

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Ether (ETH) and bitcoin (BTC)

On Friday, crypto rocketed with the broader market after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell hinted at upcoming rate cuts and investors returned to risk-on mode. Ether surged 15% and bitcoin gained 4%.

Ether, rather than bitcoin, has been leading the crypto marker for several weeks thanks to regulatory tailwinds, a boom in interest in stablecoins and buying en masse by a new cohort of corporate ether accumulators. On Saturday, Bitmine Immersion Technologies, the ether treasury company chaired by Wall Street bull Tom Lee, bought $45 million of ether, according to crypto data provider Arkham.

That shift in leadership has helped sustain ETH, which has sustained the $4,000 level this month after unsuccessfully testing the resistance mark a handful of times since 2021.

“The buyers are finally bigger than the sellers,” said Ben Kurland, CEO at crypto research platform DYOR. “ETH ETFs are drawing steady inflows, and public companies are beginning to treat ETH as a treasury asset they can stake for yield — a stickier form of demand than retail speculation.”

“Additionally, nearly a third of supply is locked in staking, scaling solutions are mature and, with rate cuts back on the table, the cost of capital is falling,” he added. “Those forces turned $4,000 from a resistance level into a foundation for re-pricing ETH’s next chapter.”

Don’t miss these cryptocurrency insights from CNBC Pro:

Technology

How the U.S. space industry became dependent on SpaceX

Published

15 hours ago

August 24, 2025

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How the U.S. space industry became dependent on SpaceX

SpaceX is valued at around $400 billion and is critical for U.S. space access, but it wasn’t always the powerhouse that it is today.

Elon Musk founded SpaceX in 2002. Using money that he made from the sale of PayPal, Musk and his new company developed their first rocket, the Falcon 1, to challenge existing launch providers.

“There were actually a lot of startup aerospace companies looking to take on this market. They recognized we had a monopoly provider called United Launch Alliance. They had merged the Boeing and Lockheed rocket launch capacity to one company, and they were charging the government hundreds of millions of dollars to launch satellites,” said Lori Garver, a former deputy administrator at NASA.

In 2003, Musk paraded Falcon 1 around the streets of Washington hoping to attract the attention of government agencies and the multi-million dollar contracts that they offered. It worked, and in 2004, SpaceX secured a few million dollars from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, and the U.S. Air Force to further develop its rockets.

Despite the government support, the company struggled. Its first three launches of the Falcon 1 failed to reach orbit.

“NASA, and specifically the the initial commercial cargo contract, is what saved the company when it was on the brink of bankruptcy,” said Chris Quilty, president and Co-CEO of Quilty Space, a space-focused research firm.

NASA awarded the $1.6 billion contract, known as Commercial Resupply Services to SpaceX in 2008, just months after the first successful flight of the Falcon 1. The contract called on SpaceX to use its new rocket, the Falcon 9, along with its Dragon capsule to ferry cargo and supplies to the International Space Station over the course of 12 missions. In 2014, SpaceX won another NASA contract worth $2.6 billion to develop and operate vehicles to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

Today, SpaceX dominates large parts of the space market from launch to satellites. In 2024, SpaceX conducted a record-breaking 134 orbital launches, more than double the amount of launches done by the next most prolific launch provider, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, according to science and technology consulting firm BryceTech. These 134 launches accounted for 83% of all spacecraft launched last year. According to a July report by Bloomberg, SpaceX was valued at $400 billion.

SpaceX’s Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket are the primary means by which NASA launches astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station. The company’s Starlink satellites have become indispensable for providing internet access to remote areas as well as to U.S. allies during wartime. The company’s Starship rocket, though still in testing, is also key to the U.S. plan to return to the moon. SpaceX is also building a network of spy satellites for the U.S. government called Starshield as part of a $1.8 billion contract. Even competitors including Amazon and OneWeb have launched their satellites on SpaceX rockets.

“The ecosystem of space is changed by, really it’s SpaceX,” Garver said. “The lower cost of access to space is doing what we had dreamed of. It is built up a whole community of companies around the world that now have access to space.”

Watch the video to find out more.

Technology

Cybersecurity firm Netskope files to go public on the Nasdaq

Published

2 days ago

August 22, 2025

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Cybersecurity firm Netskope files to go public on the Nasdaq

Sanjay Beri, chief executive officer and founder of Netskope Inc., listens during a Bloomberg West television interview in San Francisco, California.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Cloud security platform Netskope will go public on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “NTSK,” the company said in an initial public offering filing Friday.

The Santa Clara, California-based company said annual recurring revenue grew 33% to $707 million, while revenues jumped 31% to about $328 million in the first half of the year.

But Netskope isn’t profitable yet. The company recorded a $170 million net loss during the first half of the year. That narrowed from a $207 million loss a year ago.

Netskope joins an increasing number of technology companies adding momentum to the surge in IPO activity after high inflation and interest rates effectively killed the market.

So far this year, design software firm Figma more than tripled in its New York Stock Exchange debut, while crypto firm Circle soared 168% in its first trading day. CoreWeave has also popped since its IPO, while trading app eToro surged 29% in its May debut.