New factory in Taylor will give discarded EV batteries a second life

The US Department of Energy has announced that this will happen invest $20.3 million to build a new, unique facility in Taylor to help reuse and recycle electric vehicle batteries.

The branch will be run by Moment energya Canadian-based company that specializes in giving used EV batteries a second life.

“It turns out that on average, 80% of these batteries still have 80% of their original capacity left when they are removed from the car,” one of the company’s co-founders, Sumreen Rattan, told KUT. “So our goal is to ensure that these batteries go through a fully circular economy – that we reuse them and get the most out of them.”

She said her company typically focuses on reusing batteries for off-grid power generation projects – providing a sustainable backup power method that can be used during natural disasters and grid outages.

But Rattan said Moment Energy also plans to use the Taylor plant to repurpose batteries so they can help power other nearby manufacturing and industrial operations.

“We can help them … get the power they need to run their production lines and to install things like EV chargers for their employees or for their own customers outside the building,” she said.

That’s an exciting prospect for Dave Porter, the director of The Williamson County Economic Development Partnership.

“(The EV industry) is one of our top targets because of Tesla’s proximity… to San Antonio, Toyota and Dallas,” he said. “Being on the I-35 corridor, with SH 130 looping around Austin, Williamson County is really well-positioned to win some of these projects.”

In fact, the Austin area leads the state in EV adoption. Last year, data showed that 2.1% of registered vehicles in Travis County are battery-powered cars and trucks. Williamson County wasn’t far behind, with 1.5% of registered vehicles in the county being electric.

Dave Tuttle, a researcher at UT Austin’s Energy Institutesays finding ways to reuse and recycle EV batteries is becoming increasingly important as more people adopt electric vehicles.

“Sooner or later, everything in a car is going to eventually wear out,” he said. “And so people are looking forward to it when we have millions of electric cars and they finally get older: … What do you do with those batteries in a responsible way?”

Design and development of the Moment Energy facility in Taylor is expected to begin early next year. The project is expected to create more than 200 new jobs.