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A decade or two on the road will drain an EV battery’s range and hobble its acceleration. But while it peters out for daily commutes, that battery still has a lot of juice left.
A cohort of battery entrepreneurs is giving these units a second life, powering off-grid communities, industrial sites and energy-hungry data centers. Industry leaders — British Columbia’s Moment Energy and Redwood Materials in Nevada — are rapidly scaling up as the supply of aging batteries surges.
This summer, Moment moved into its 100,000-square-foot Megafactory 1 near Vancouver, converting a shell into its new HQ and manufacturing space in six weeks. It’s also building a Texas Gigafactory expected to open in January.
Redwood is likewise ramping up after unveiling the world’s largest used-EV battery system in June 2025: A 63-megawatt-hour solar and battery installation powering a Nevada data center run by AI infrastructure company Crusoe.
Absent reuse, these batteries end up in landfills or recycling shredders.
“Why recycle this battery prematurely when there’s over 95% life left?” asked Eddy Chiang, CEO and co-founder of Moment. When the batteries get recycled, some companies send the material to China for refinement, exporting valuable raw materials.
The market’s potential is massive. Chiang estimates that the used batteries available today could match Denver’s electricity use 20 times over — and 90 times over in four years.
The ‘Christmas light’ problem
So why pull an EV battery that still has 80% or more of its life left? Think Christmas lights, says Chiang.
Particularly with lights sold in the past, “if one light bulb burnt out, the whole string burns out,” he said. “And that’s what’s happening in the battery pack. The actual failure mode for EVs is actually due to a single cell failure, like that light bulb.”
EV battery packs contain hundreds or thousands of cells that are grouped into modules, which are housed in large metal shells affixed under the vehicle’s floorboard. The cells can be similar to the AA batteries in consumer electronics, while others are larger blocks or pouches.
When Moment receives used batteries, it first runs diagnostics to test their performance. Then it breaks down the packs into modules, and racks them in cooled shipping containers. Moment uses proprietary software to redirect energy away from weak cells to healthy ones to extend battery life.
The company’s largest storage system is called Luna, delivering up to 1 megawatt hour of energy, which is enough electricity to power roughly 49 Seattle households for 24 hours. It’s preparing to launch a new model, but keeping the details under wraps.
Moment customers range from God’s Pocket Resort, an eco-lodge on a tiny Canadian island where its system slashed the use of diesel generators, to Vancouver International Airport, which avoided up to $20 million in grid upgrades to power fast chargers for its EV fleet, Chiang said. “Instead, they bought a couple of our batteries.”
From recycling to reusing
Redwood Materials began nearly a decade ago as a battery recycler led by former Tesla executives. But in recent years, they recognized a missed opportunity.
“We had a group of people standing around watching our recycling operation, looking at these giant battery packs that we’re going to so much effort to disassemble, and just wondering, ‘Can we do more with these before we shred them?'” said Colin Campbell, Redwood’s chief technology officer.
Now 95% of the EV batteries Redwood receives are reused rather than recycled. And despite its Tesla roots, the startup accepts batteries from any automaker and has created a “universal translator” that manages battery packs with different voltages, power and chemistry.
Campbell touts the conversion of the EV devices to stationary storage as straightforward.
In its simplest terms, Redwood’s energy storage sites are “an electric vehicle parking lot with the wheels removed,” he said. “So it’s just literally the battery that was in the car. There’s lots of them arranged in a grid together and plugged in.”
That plug-and-play approach solved major headaches for Crusoe. By pairing repurposed EV batteries with solar power for its new AI data center in Nevada, Crusoe bypassed multi-year grid-connection delays, saved money and avoided emissions from diesel generators.
Scott Williams, vice president of energy at Crusoe, said the solution has worked well for his company, which builds data centers and offers its own AI cloud services.
“We’ve signaled to Redwood that we’re going to grow with them,” Williams said, including “multiple gigawatt hours paired with our modular units, which is super exciting.”
Industry headwinds
Despite the momentum, the sector faces headwinds. Communities have resisted large battery projects due to fire concerns, sparked by high-profile incidents like California’s Moss Landing fire.
The companies emphasize that EV batteries are built to survive high-speed crashes, making them inherently safer than standard stationary battery storage. The Moss Landing fire involved older, non-EV batteries in a very different setup than the startups are using. Additionally, Moment’s systems hold extensive UL safety certifications and Redwood has passed a UL fire-safety test.
Another industry hurdle is competition. Overbuilt recycling capacity — plus U.S. and European mandates requiring recycled content in new batteries — creates competition for used EV packs.
Yet from a climate perspective, repurposing is vital. Batteries are almost always “the most carbon-intensive component” in any electronic device, said Grayson Shor, executive director of the Pacific Northwest Battery Collaborative and co-founder of the startup Buckstop.
Repurposed EV systems can extend that initial carbon investment by providing clean power for 20 to 30 years and meet urgent energy demand.
“Everybody’s like, ‘Where are we going to get electricity?'” Campbell says. “And we have a really excellent option already here.”
Sources and references
Interviews:
- Eddy Chiang, CEO and co-founder at Moment Energy
- Colin Campbell, chief technology officer at Redwood Materials
- Scott Williams, vice president of energy at Crusoe
- Grayson Shor, executive director of the Pacific Northwest Battery Collaborative, and co-founder and chief product officer of Buckstop, a circular-economy startup focused on the recovery of minerals and other valuable materials
Additional sources:
- “Electric-Vehicle Battery Basics” (Car and Driver)
- “How long do EV batteries last” (Recurrent)
- God’s Pocket Resort eco-lodge
