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JB Straubel at Financial Times Future of the Car 2022 — Battery Recycling & the EV  Supply Chain

by | Jun 22, 2026 | Interviews

About the author

Narasimhan Santhanam (Narsi) is the Co-founder and Director of Energy Alternatives India (EAI), which he established in 2008 as one of India's first boutique cleantech management consulting firms.

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Narasimhan Santhanam

A BTech graduate from IIT Madras and PGDM holder from IIM Calcutta, Narsi has spent over 15 years helping CEOs and senior leadership of Indian and global companies navigate the climate tech landscape. He has consulted for over 200 organisations spanning solar, bio-energy, electric mobility, and green hydrogen, with clients ranging from GE and Bosch to the World Bank and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Beyond EAI, Narsi leads several climate initiatives including Climafix, a prominent accelerator platform for India's climate startup ecosystem, CliDemy, a climate education platform, and C3, the world's first industry-led city-focused climate action consortium. He has authored over 25 industry reports, spoken at more than 100 conferences globally, and served on government and industry committees on sustainability. His work sits at the intersection of deep domain expertise, India market knowledge, and a vast network across the cleantech value chain.

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JB Straubel, CEO of Redwood Materials and former Tesla CTO, joins FT’s Patrick McGee to discuss building a closed-loop battery recycling ecosystem.
Key insights:
Battery materials never get consumed, so up to 99% can be recovered and reused indefinitely, unlike fossil fuels.

Recycling is already cheaper than mining even at small scale, cathode and anode materials make up roughly 65% of a battery’s cost, yet the US has almost no domestic cathode production.

Straubel remains skeptical of hydrogen due to its poor cost trajectory versus batteries.

Redwood is partnering with Panasonic, Ford, and Amazon to localize the supply chain away from Asia.

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