New recycling facility is charging up Alabama’s auto industry

Hey, Alabama—we’re going electric! Li-Cycle, a Canadian-based lithium-ion battery recycler, plans to open a facility in Alabama. It will be near the Mercedes-Benz assembly plant in Tuscaloosa County. Keep reading to learn more about this new electric vehicle (EV) battery venture.

Li-Cycle: reduce, reuse, recycle

Before we get into the plans, let’s talk about the planet. Sometimes, we’re not as kind to our planet as we should be. This is where Li-Cycle comes in—they are solving the global battery recycling problem.

How do they do this? Through a sustainable process that recovers critical materials from lithium-ion batteries and reintroduces the batteries back into the supply chain. Essentially, they are recycling the batteries for new use. We’re digging their take on reduce, reuse and recycle.

The future is electric

This will be the fourth Li-Cycle facility in North America. The facility plans to begin production in 2022. It is making Alabama an even stronger force in the EV supply chain.

“The addition of Li-Cycle to Alabama’s strong automotive landscape continues to show the importance of Alabama’s emerging EV sector. With the multitude of recent EV announcements from in-state and national manufacturers, adding a battery recycling facility here will further solidify Alabama’s position as a forward leaning state that is preparing for a 21st-century transportation system.”

—Blake Hardwich, Executive Director of the Energy Institute of Alabama

The EV shift is happening fast. Here is how Alabama’s automotive industry is going electric:

• Mercedes: To go all electric by 2030
  • 2022 will see EVs and crossovers produced at the Tuscaloosa plant
• Hyundai: To build EVs in Montgomery and invest $7.4B in new technologies
• Honda: To go all electric by 2040
• In addition, more than 130 models of EVs are expected to be available by 2024

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