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Former Tesla CTO’s battery recycling startup secures funding from Amazon
Redwood Materials, the battery recycling startup founded by former Tesla CTO JB Straubel, recently secured some funding from Amazon as part of the e-commerce giant’s efforts to reduce its emissions. Redwood is one of five companies that Amazon is investing in as part of its Climate Pledge Fund, which was announced last year and expected to cost about $2 billion.
In a statement about the five companies that received funding, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos stated that firms like Redwood are “channeling their entrepreneurial energy into helping Amazon and other companies reach net zero by 2040 and keep the planet safer for future generations.” Amazon, for its part, appears to be interested in Redwood’s recycling technology, which could allow materials like lithium, cobalt, and nickel to be extracted from old smartphones and other consumer devices.
Redwood was founded by the former Tesla CTO in 2017 after seeing that the global shift to electric vehicles will likely cause unnecessary environmental damage from a surge in mining. Such a scenario would only happen, however, if there is no recycling system in place that would allow EV producers to reuse the materials that have already been used in their cars’ batteries. Speaking with the Financial Times, Straubel shared his vision for the transportation sector, which involves the mass adoption of EVs and a closed-loop battery recycling system.
“(My vision is a) world where all of the transportation is done by electric vehicles and we have batteries powering a sustainable world. And all of those batteries are able to be recycled and remanufactured many, many times so that we can have a nearly closed-loop,” Straubel said.
This same concept stands just as true in the consumer electronics sector, according to the former Tesla CTO. Straubel remarked that while batteries are bound to degrade with repeated use, the underlying elements that comprise them remain sealed from the environment. This meant that the batteries’ materials, most of which are very valuable, could be broken down and repurposed once more. If this is accomplished, the former Tesla executive believes that mining would not be as necessary anymore.
“There are a phenomenal amount of cell phones in the world that currently are being discarded as trash or thrown into a landfill. It’s a massive, untapped resource. If we can recover 98 or 99% of those materials and reuse them, we don’t need very much new material to keep that whole process running… Even though the battery is internally degraded, all of the same materials are still in there — all of the same atoms of lithium, nickel, and cobalt. You can still harness all of those same materials, but they need to be reprocessed and brought back to a state where they could be used again and built into a new battery,” Straubel remarked.
The exact amount of funding that Redwood Materials has acquired from Amazon has not been disclosed by either company, through the former Tesla executive noted that there was a potential for “partnership on a number of different levels” between the recycling startup and the e-commerce giant. One of these levels may include aiding Amazon in building and developing an end-of-life process for consumer electronics that are sold through its e-commerce platform so that the devices and their components could be reused.
Redwood Materials has remained mostly in stealth mode since its founding, though signs have emerged that the company may be part of Tesla’s efforts to develop its own battery recycling processes. One of these involves an existing partnership with Panasonic to reclaim the scrap that is generated from the battery cells currently produced at Tesla’s Gigafactory Nevada facility. Reports have indicated that Panasonic initially started a trial run with Redwood to reclaim more than 400 pounds of scrap from Giga Nevada, and the results were so successful that the Japanese firm raised its contract to 2 tons not long after.
News
Tesla Model 3 gets perfect 5-star Euro NCAP safety rating
Tesla prides itself on producing some of the safest vehicles on the road today.

Tesla prides itself on producing some of the safest vehicles on the road today. Based on recent findings from the Euro NCAP, the 2025 Model 3 sedan continues this tradition, with the vehicle earning a 5-star overall safety rating from the agency.
Standout Safety Features
As could be seen on the Euro NCAP’s official website, the 2025 Model 3 achieved an overall score of 90% for Adult Occupants, 93% for Child Occupants, 89% for Vulnerable Road Users, and 87% for Safety Assist. This rating, as per the Euro NCAP, applies to the Model 3 Rear Wheel Drive, Long Range Rear Wheel Drive, Long Range All Wheel Drive, and Performance All Wheel Drive.
The Euro NCAP highlighted a number of the Model 3’s safety features, such as its Active Hood, which automatically lifts during collisions to mitigate injury risks to vulnerable road users, and Automatic Emergency Braking System, which now detects motorcycles through an upgraded algorithm. The Euro NCAP also mentioned the Model 3’s feature that prevents initial door opening if someone is approaching the vehicle’s blind spot.
Standout Safety Features
In a post on its official Tesla Europe & Middle East account, Tesla noted that the company is also introducing new features that make the Model 3 even safer than it is today. These include functions like head-on collision avoidance and crossing traffic AEB, as well as Child Left Alone Detection, among other safety features.
“We also introduced new features to improve Safety Assist functionality even further – like head-on collision avoidance & crossing traffic AEB – to detect & respond to potential hazards faster, helping avoid accidents in the first place.
“Lastly, we released Child Left Alone Detection – if an unattended child is detected, the vehicle will turn on HVAC & alert caregivers via phone app & the vehicle itself (flashing lights/audible alert). Because we’re using novel in-cabin radar sensing, your Tesla is able to distinguish between adult vs child – reduced annoyance to adults, yet critical safety feature for kids,” Tesla wrote in its post on X.
Below is the Euro NCAP’s safety report on the 2025 Tesla Model 3 sedan.
Euroncap 2025 Tesla Model 3 Datasheet by Simon Alvarez on Scribd
Elon Musk
USDOT Secretary visits Tesla Giga Texas, hints at national autonomous vehicle standards
The Transportation Secretary also toured the factory’s production lines and spoke with CEO Elon Musk.

United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) Secretary Sean Duffy recently visited Tesla’s Gigafactory Texas complex, where he toured the factory’s production lines and spoke with CEO Elon Musk. In a video posted following his Giga Texas visit, Duffy noted that he believes there should be a national standard for autonomous vehicles in the United States.
Duffy’s Giga Texas Visit
As could be seen in videos of his Giga Texas visit, the Transportation Secretary seemed to appreciate the work Tesla has been doing to put the United States in the forefront of innovation. “Tesla is one of the many companies helping our country reach new heights. USDOT will be right there all the way to make sure Americans stay safe,” Duffy wrote in a post on X.
He also praised Tesla for its autonomous vehicle program, highlighting that “We need American companies to keep innovating so we can outcompete the rest of the world.”
National Standard
While speaking with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the Transportation Secretary stated that other autonomous ride-hailing companies have been lobbying for a national standard for self-driving cars. Musk shared the sentiment, stating that “It’d be wonderful for the United States to have a national set of rules for autonomous driving as opposed to 50 independent sets of rules on a state-by-state rules basis.”
Duffy agreed with the CEO’s point, stating that, “You can’t have 50 different rules for 50 different states. You need one standard.” He also noted that the Transportation Department has asked autonomous vehicle companies to submit data. By doing so, the USDOT could develop a standard for the entire United States, allowing self-driving cars to operate in a manner that is natural and safe.
News
Tesla posts Optimus’ most impressive video demonstration yet
The humanoid robot was able to complete all the tasks through a single neural network.

When Elon Musk spoke with CNBC’s David Faber in an interview at Giga Texas, he reiterated the idea that Optimus will be one of Tesla’s biggest products. Seemingly to highlight the CEO’s point, the official Tesla Optimus account on social media platform X shared what could very well be the most impressive demonstration of the humanoid robot’s capabilities to date.
Optimus’ Newest Demonstration
In its recent video demonstration, the Tesla Optimus team featured the humanoid robot performing a variety of tasks. These include household chores such as throwing the trash, using a broom and a vacuum cleaner, tearing a paper towel, stirring a pot of food, opening a cabinet, and closing a curtain, among others. The video also featured Optimus picking up a Model X fore link and placing it on a dolly.
What was most notable in the Tesla Optimus team’s demonstration was the fact that the humanoid robot was able to complete all the tasks through a single neural network. The robot’s actions were also learned directly from Optimus being fed data from first-person videos of humans performing similar tasks. This system should pave the way for Optimus to learn and refine new skills quickly and reliably.
Tesla VP for Optimus Shares Insight
In a follow-up post on X, Tesla Vice President of Optimus (Tesla Bot) Milan Kovac stated that one of the team’s goals is to have Optimus learn straight from internet videos of humans performing tasks, including footage captured in third person or by random cameras.
“We recently had a significant breakthrough along that journey, and can now transfer a big chunk of the learning directly from human videos to the bots (1st person views for now). This allows us to bootstrap new tasks much faster compared to teleoperated bot data alone (heavier operationally).
“Many new skills are emerging through this process, are called for via natural language (voice/text), and are run by a single neural network on the bot (multi-tasking). Next: expand to 3rd person video transfer (aka random internet), and push reliability via self-play (RL) in the real-, and/or synthetic- (sim / world models) world,” Kovac wrote in his post on X.
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