Samsar remanufactures 1,000th Nissan Leaf battery pack

Samsar Resources says it has remanufactured 1,000 Nissan Leaf battery packs at its factory outside Houston, turning used EV batteries into new energy storage instead of sending them to recyclers. The milestone underscores a growing U.S. market for battery remanufacturing and a possible second life for EV packs.

Why it matters: - Samsar says it has returned more than 25 MWh of battery capacity to the field instead of the recycler. - The milestone signals that used EV batteries can be refurbished into lower-cost storage for security, marine, worksite and other applications. - The company says remanufacturing can preserve value, support a more robust U.S. lithium battery supply chain and reduce demand for scarce minerals.

What happened: - Samsar Resources said it has transformed its 1,000th Nissan Leaf battery pack into new energy storage. - The company remanufactures battery packs at its factory outside Houston, Texas. - Samsar says it reached the milestone halfway through 2026 after three years of remanufacturing its first 1,000 packs. - The company said it expects to reach 2,000 remanufactured packs in 2027.

The details: - Samsar was founded by Steve Hellman, a venture capitalist and founder of Mobility Impact Partners. - The company was built around design-for-remanufacturing principles for lithium batteries. - Samsar says its process captures 90% of the value of each pack by downsizing packs to modules and performing cell-level quality control. - The company says Nissan Leaf batteries fit the model because of their air-cooled pack architecture and well-understood lifetime performance. - Samsar says it remanufactured only 20 Nissan packs in 2022. - By 2025, the company says it was disassembling, testing and rebuilding more than 300 packs a year. - Battery remanufacturing involves disassembling packs, checking internal components and refurbishing them as needed. - EV batteries are typically replaced when they fall to about 80% to 90% of their original capacity.

Between the lines: - The milestone gives Samsar a proof point that remanufacturing can compete with recycling or disposal for batteries that still have useful life left. - Samsar's pitch reframes so-called end-of-life batteries as a feedstock for a new storage market rather than waste. - Kent O’Hara, former president of Nissan Energy and now a Samsar board member, called the result a solution for matching growing power demand with aging EV batteries. - Guillermo Garcia, Samsar's founding CEO, said the factory effort required building new processes from scratch with no playbook.

What's next: - Samsar says it will keep scaling its remanufacturing operation as more Nissan Leaf packs come off the road. - The company says it plans to keep using its email list and social channels to track the rollout of its remanufacturing business. - More information is available on Samsar's LinkedIn page.