What Lithium EV Battery Shortage? New Recycler Picks Up Where Ascend Elements Left Off

A new company called R3 Lithium has taken over a battery recycling plant in Covington, Georgia, that once belonged to Ascend Elements, which filed for bankruptcy earlier this year after losing federal grants and running into other financial trouble. R3 bought the site in July, free of Ascend's debts, and kept much of the same leadership, including CEO Linh Austin. The plant recovers lithium carbonate from used electric vehicle batteries and scrap, and in 2025 it became the first US facility to produce lithium carbonate that's more than 99 percent pure from recycled material at commercial scale.

R3 has raised $15 million in new funding to upgrade the plant's production line, and it already has more than $1 billion in contracts lined up to sell its output, including a deal with the commodities trader Trafigura. The company expects the site to run at full capacity next year and to eventually supply more than half of all US-made lithium carbonate. The plan is to recycle old EV batteries into new battery material entirely within the US, avoiding reliance on mining or overseas refining.

For homeowners, this doesn't mean a new rebate or program to look into. It's a sign that the domestic supply of battery materials, used in electric vehicles and increasingly in home and grid battery storage, is growing more stable even as EV sales have slowed. That matters over time for the cost and availability of batteries used in things like home backup power systems.