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.”
Uber on Monday informed employees, including some who had been previously approved for remote work, that it will require them to come to the office three days a week, CNBC has learned.
“Even as the external environment remains dynamic, we’re on solid footing, with a clear strategy and big plans,” CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told employees in the memo, which was viewed by CNBC. “As we head into this next chapter, I want to emphasize that ‘good’ is not going to be good enough — we need to be great.”
Khosrowshahi goes on to say employees need to push themselves so the company “can move faster and take smarter risks” and outlined several changes to Uber’s work policy.
Uber in 2022 established Tuesdays and Thursdays as “anchor days” where most employees must spend at least half of their work time in the company’s office. Starting in June, employees will be required in the office Tuesday through Thursday, according to the memo.
That includes some employees who were previously approved to work remotely. The company said it had already informed impacted remote employees.
“After a thorough review of our existing remote approvals, we’re asking many remote employees to come into an office,” Khosrowshahi wrote. “In addition, we’ll hire new remote roles only very sparingly.”
The company also changed its one-month paid sabbatical program, according to the memo. Previously, employees were eligible for the sabbatical after five years at the company. That’s now been raised to eight years, according to the memo.
“This program was created when Uber was a much younger company, and when reaching 5 years of tenure was a rare feat,” Khosrowshahi wrote. “Back then, we were in the office five (sometimes more!) days of a week and hadn’t instituted our Work from Anywhere benefit.”
Khosrowshahi said the changes will help Uber move faster.
“Our collective view as a leadership team is that while remote work has some benefits, being in the office fuels collaboration, sparks creativity, and increases velocity,” Khosrowshahi wrote.
The changes come as more companies in the tech industry cut costs to appease investors after over-hiring during the Covid-19 pandemic. Google recently began demanding that employees who were previously-approved for remote work also return to the office if they want to keep their jobs, CNBC reported last week.
Last year, Khosrowshahi blamed remote work for the loss of its most loyal customers, who would take ride-sharing as their commute to work.
“Going forward, we’re further raising this bar,” Khosrowshahi’s Monday memo said. “After a thorough review of our existing remote approvals, we’re asking many remote employees to come into an office. In addition, we’ll hire new remote roles only very sparingly.”
Uber’s leadership team will monitor attendance “at both team and individual levels to ensure expectations are being met,” Khosrowshahi wrote.
Following the memo, Uber employees immediately swarmed the company’s internal question-and-answer forum, according to correspondence viewed by CNBC. Khosrowshahi said he and Nikki Krishnamurthy, the company’schief people officer, will hold an all-hands meeting on Tuesday to discuss the changes.
Many employees asked leadership to reconsider the sabbatical change, arguing that the company should honor the original eligibility policy.
“This isn’t ‘doing the right thing’ for your employees,” one employee commented.
Uber did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket is on the launch pad carrying Amazon’s Project Kuiper internet network satellites, which are expected to eventually rival Elon Musk’s Starlink system, at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S., April 9, 2025.
Steve Nesius | Reuters
Amazon on Monday launched the first batch of its Kuiper internet satellites into space after an earlier attempt was scrubbed due to inclement weather.
A United Launch Alliance rocket carrying 27 Kuiper satellites lifted off from a launchpad at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida shortly after 7 p.m. eastern, according to a livestream.
“We had a nice smooth countdown, beautiful weather, beautiful liftoff, and Atlas V is on its way to orbit to take those 27 Kuiper satellites, put them on their way and really start this new era in internet connectivity,” Caleb Weiss, a systems engineer at ULA, said on the livestream following the launch.
The satellites are expected to separate from the rocket roughly 280 miles above Earth’s surface, at which point Amazon will look to confirm the satellites can independently maneuver and communicate with its employees on the ground.
Six years ago Amazon unveiled its plans to build a constellation of internet-beaming satellites in low Earth orbit, called Project Kuiper. The service will compete directly with Elon Musk’s Starlink, which currently dominates the market and has 8,000 satellites in orbit.
The first Kuiper mission kicks off what will need to become a steady cadence of launches in order for Amazon to meet a deadline set by the Federal Communications Commission. The agency expects the company to have half of its total constellation, or 1,618 satellites, up in the air by July 2026.
Amazon has booked more than 80 launches to deploy dozens of satellites at a time. In addition to ULA, its launch partners include Musk’s SpaceX (parent company of Starlink), European company Arianespace and Jeff Bezos’ space exploration startup Blue Origin.
Amazon is spending as much as $10 billion to build the Kuiper network. It hopes to begin commercial service for consumers, enterprises and government later this year.
In his shareholder letter earlier this month, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said Kuiper will require upfront investment at first, but eventually the company expects it to be “a meaningful operating income and ROIC business for us.” ROIC stands for return on invested capital.
Investors will be listening for any commentary around further capex spend on Kuiper when Amazon reports first-quarter earnings after the bell on Thursday.
Larry Ellison, co-founder and executive chairman of Oracle Corp., speaks during the Oracle OpenWorld 2018 conference in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Monday, Oct. 22, 2018.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Oracle engineers mistakenly triggered a five-day software outage at a number of Community Health Systems hospitals, causing the facilities to temporarily return to paper-based patient records.
CHS told CNBC that the outage involving Oracle Health, the company’s electronic health record (EHR) system, affected “several” hospitals, leading them to activate “downtime procedures.” Trade publication Becker’s Hospital Review reported that 45 hospitals were hit.
The outage began on April 23, after engineers conducting maintenance work mistakenly deleted critical storage connected to a key database, a CHS spokesperson said in a statement. The outage was resolved on Monday, and was not related to a cyberattack or other security incident.
CHS is based in Tennessee and includes 72 hospitals in 14 states, according to the medical system’s website.
“Despite this being a major outage, our hospitals were able to maintain services with no material impact,” the spokesperson said. “We are proud of our clinical and support teams who worked through the multi-day outage with professionalism and a commitment to delivering high-quality, safe care for patients.”
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Oracle didn’t immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
An EHR is a digital version of a patient’s medical history that’s updated by doctors and nurses. It’s crucial software within the U.S. health-care system, and outages can cause serious disruptions to patient care. Oracle acquired EHR vendor Cerner in 2022 for $28.3 billion, becoming the second-biggest player in the market, behind Epic Systems.
Now that Oracle’s systems are back online, CHS said that the impacted hospitals are working to “re-establish full functionality and return to normal operations and procedures.”
Oracle’s CHS error comes weeks after the company’s federal electronic health record experienced a nationwide outage. Oracle has struggled with a thorny, years-long EHR rollout with the Department of Veterans Affairs, marred by patient safety concerns. The agency launched a strategic review of Cerner in 2021, before Oracle’s acquisition, and it temporarily paused deployment of the software in 2023.