JB Straubel

Biography

A cutting-edge entrepreneur, Jeffrey Brian or “JB” Straubel has also become a passionate champion of sustainable technology, especially as it affects the motor industry, battery technology and other electronic waste. For business and corporate events, he is a headline booking as a technology or environmental speaker.

In 2004 JB Straubel was the fifth employee of a new company – Tesla – which would go on to revolutionise the way we think about cars, clean energy and batteries. In fact he is named as one of the co-founders of Tesla, the company initially largely financed by Elon Musk. who has been its Chief Executive Officer since 2008.

JB Straubel was the company’s first Chief Technical Officer, helping to develop a new generation of battery technology to power electric cars for the mass market – in a world which was still hooked on petrol and diesel at that time.  Straubel had a direct role in research and development both in battery design and the overall prototype cars which they powered, through to mass production. It was also his responsibility to evaluate emerging new technologies and their potential impact on the company’s projects in a rapidly developing and highly competitive sector where scientific and academic research can often overlap with the workplace.

After 15 years JB Straubel left this complex and challenging post in 2019 for an advisory role, so that he could concentrate full-time on the next natural challenge – minimising the environmental impact of the electric car’s central component, its battery. Lithium-ion batteries may be helping to wean the world off fossil fuels, but they don’t last forever and are difficult to recycle.

JB Straubel had co-founded his firm Redwood Materials two years earlier in 2017 to address this issue, working to minimise waste by developing and pioneering new battery recycling techniques.

JB Straubel’s efforts to solve this pressing problem have been recognised by his alma mater, Stanford University, where he’s leading a new course on sustainable energy to inspire the next generation of engineers. He provides unparalleled insight into the challenges posed by the green revolution, making him the perfect choice for your event as a technology, business or environmental speaker.