US EV sales at a one-year high, Redwood to recycle Rivian packs, Jeju V2G

Three electric-vehicle stories from October 12 to 16, 2026: US EV sales had their best quarter in a year, still well short of 2025's record; Redwood Materials took on Rivian's battery scrap and retired packs; and Hyundai Motor Group said that, on the strength of its Jeju Island vehicle-to-grid pilot, electric vehicles are set to be registered as local flexibility resources.

US EV sales reach their best quarter in a year

Americans bought an estimated 262,649 electric vehicles in the third quarter of 2026, up 6.1% from the second quarter and the most since the record third quarter of 2025, Cox Automotive said on October 12, citing Kelley Blue Book estimates. That is still 39.5% below a year earlier, when buyers rushed to use expiring federal incentives. The 6.1% is growth, not share: EVs took about 6.4% of new-vehicle sales, up from 5.8% in the second quarter, and counting hybrids and plug-ins nearly 25% of the quarter's sales were electrified in some manner. Kelley Blue Book's table puts sales for the year so far at 725,888, down 30.3%.

"The third quarter was the highest EV sales volume in a year, and improvement through 2026 suggests the reset phase is largely behind us," said Stephanie Valdez Streaty, director of Industry Insights at Cox Automotive.

Tesla sold 144,094, down 19.7% but 54.0% of the segment, and the Model Y was 69% of its sales, per Cox. Rivian rose 45.7% to 19,239, including 8,469 EDV commercial vans, more than its R1S and R1T combined, and 3,456 of the new R2. Volkswagen sold 1,421, down 90.5%. For September alone, Benchmark counted a 44% year-on-year fall in North American EV sales. In California, battery-electric cars alone were 16.3% of third-quarter new-car sales, the state's Energy Commission says.

Toyota and Lexus EV sales nearly quadrupled, by our arithmetic, rather than rising nearly fivefold as Cox's commentary still says: the revised table has the two brands at 17,387 against 4,576 a year earlier. Cox revised the table on October 13, cutting Lexus ES sales from 6,064 in the version dated October 12 to 2,083 and the quarter's total from 266,630 to 262,649; the commentary carries an editor's note about the correction.

Redwood to recycle Rivian's scrap and retired packs

Redwood Materials will recycle the battery scrap from Rivian's manufacturing operations and the carmaker's end-of-life EV packs, and provide stationary storage at Rivian's plant in Normal, Illinois, the two companies said on October 14. Redwood collects packs no longer suitable for in-vehicle use through Rivian's nationwide network of service centers and evaluates each one, either repurposing it for energy storage, at Rivian's manufacturing facilities or at other locations, or recycling it.

The deal extends work announced in April 2026 that is deploying 10 MWh of battery energy storage from repurposed Rivian packs at Normal. For comparison, B2U Storage Solutions said on September 9, 2026 that it operates roughly 100 MWh at sites using repurposed EV batteries in Texas and California.

The companies say Redwood's process can recover critical minerals such as lithium, nickel, cobalt and copper at rates above 95%; the release gives no tonnage, price or start date for the new work. Their pitch ends on the grid rather than the minerals: grid connections take years to secure, the release says, and it calls the arrangement "one partnership spanning the full lifecycle of a battery, built to move faster than the grid alone can."

Hyundai says EVs are set to be registered as flexibility resources, citing Jeju

On the strength of its Jeju Island vehicle-to-grid pilot, Hyundai Motor Group says electric vehicles are set to be officially registered as local flexibility resources, in a feature published October 16. It says an analysis with Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) of hourly charging and discharging loads and electricity demand confirmed that V2G can help smooth the flow in the local distribution grid.

The pilot, which Hyundai calls Korea's first V2G pilot service and announced in November 2025, launched in December 2025 with the Jeju Provincial Government, SOCAR, Herit and GENIS Korea: 15 bidirectional chargers at the Jeju SOCAR Terminal near Jeju International Airport and 20 vehicles, including the Hyundai IONIQ 9 and Kia EV9. A second phase with 40 IONIQ 9 and EV9 owners began in May 2026, with chargers installed free at their homes and workplaces. Hyundai's November 2025 announcement said participants could discharge when prices rise through Jeju's real-time energy market. The October feature says there are no established rates for discharged power yet, so participants are paid back their full charging costs for the trial; Mercedes-Benz's German home V2G launch offer instead pays for every hour the car is connected.

The island's surplus power also got in the pilot's way. Renewables supply over 20% of Jeju's total energy consumption, Hyundai says, and output is curtailed when generation outruns low demand. With few nearby facilities to use the power, feeding electricity into the grid briefly spiked voltage in the distribution lines, and chargers disconnected from the cars to protect the equipment, leaving charging and discharging targets unmet.