Renewable energy startup Posh raises $3.8m seed round to automate EV battery recycling

Renewable energy startup Posh raises $3.8m seed round to automate EV battery recycling

Published: 24-06-2022 11:27:00 | By: Pie Kamau | hits: 3490 | Tags:

Y Combinator alum, Posh, announced it has raised $3.8 million in seed funding. The Bay Area startup automates electric vehicle (EV) battery recycling to build sustainable energy storage solutions.

Wesley Zheng, CEO and Co-founder, Posh: "There will be around 12 million tons of batteries retiring from EV between now and 2030. Most of these batteries have 80% capacity unused and thousands of dollars worth of precious metals. Today these retired batteries are disassembled almost 100% manually before they are reused or shredded for recycling. We are changing this by making battery disassembly fast, safe, and scalable. We want to bring affordable lithium-ion batteries to the masses and help create a circular economy for our electric future." 

So far, EV battery pack disassembly has been a manual and laborious process, exposing the workers to a great deal of fire and safety risks. One of the biggest challenges in scaling up the applications of end-of-life EV batteries is automating battery pack disassembly and grading. Traditional automation is suitable for pre-programmed, repetitive tasks in a highly structured environment. There are currently many product variants for retired EV battery packs and no common standards in battery pack design.

Chung Hoang ,Co-founder and CTO, said developing flexible automation systems that can handle a large variety of packs and deal with uncertainties remains a significant bottleneck in expanding end-of-life EV batteries utilization. "In order to build a fully scalable solution, we have to build a model that we can train to handle all types of batteries."

Along with Muse lead singer Matt Bellamy (through Helium-3 Ventures), investors include Y Combinator, Metaplanet, Outbound Capital, Starling Ventures, Uphonest Capital, Global Founders Capital, and others.

www.poshrobotics.com