Moment Energy’s battery reuse bet runs into a scale test

A second life before recycling

EV batteries require mined and processed minerals, manufacturing, and often long-distance shipping. Recycling can also mean sending North American batteries to China to recover their materials. Reuse offers a way to extend a pack’s service before it reaches that stage.

Moment tests each cell in a used battery pack for performance and safety. Its own AI models estimate remaining life; cells that fail inspection go to recycling. The rest are assembled into steel containers 20 or 40 feet long. Moment says its systems can add another 10–30 years of service.

The potential supply is substantial: the International Energy Agency says 1.2 terawatt-hours of EV batteries were put into use worldwide last year. More than one million EV batteries could reach the end of their service life by 2030. Moment says its model could redirect more than two gigawatt-hours of batteries from landfills and recycling facilities each year.

Scale is the hard part

The company has commissioned 11 systems, first for off-grid homes and more recently for hospitals, airports, and other commercial and industrial sites. Some need extra power; others want to avoid expensive upgrades as new loads, such as EV chargers, come online.

Moment buys used batteries from about 20 automakers, including Nissan and Mercedes-Benz. How many packs it can secure, and how quickly it can inspect and repurpose them, will shape how fast it grows.

Price is another constraint. Moment says its systems now cost less than $90 per kilowatt-hour. In early 2026, the average price of batteries for energy storage reached $70 per kilowatt-hour. Even after tariffs and shipping, some new batteries may still be cheaper than repurposed ones.

The company says it is the only battery-reuse business to hold important certifications from independent organization UL, which financiers and insurers use to assess the safety of battery-system investments. It is also preparing to count converted batteries as locally made in both Canada and the United States, where it is building a new factory. Those advantages may help, but they do not remove the basic cost comparison.

Two factories, a much larger market

Moment opened Megafactory 1 in Vancouver in June. The company says it is the world’s largest facility of its kind; by 2030, it is expected to repurpose batteries with a total capacity of one gigawatt-hour a year. It took six weeks to launch.

A larger facility is nearing completion in Texas. Moment is using funding from the US Department of Energy and part of the $100 million raised from investors including Amazon and Liberty Mutual.

Even together, the two factories will process only a small share of the batteries coming off vehicles in North America. I think that is the more revealing number than the factory’s planned capacity: the business case depends not just on demand for storage, but on whether Moment can build a supply chain and production system fast enough to matter.

The company began after two tornadoes cut power to hospitals and cell towers in the Ottawa area in 2018. Its founders started by taking apart Nissan Leaf batteries in a British Columbia garage to build backup systems. Now outages linked to hurricanes and wildfires, data-center demand, and trade tensions over battery imports give the business more reasons to grow. But the climate case rests on volume, and the factories remain small beside the market they are meant to serve.