Bringing batteries back from the dead. I'm David Brancaccio. A new factory will bring new life to old

electric vehicle batteries, turning them into longer-term energy storage. This week, the energy department

announced a $20 million grant to partially finance a conversion plant in Texas. It's part of an

emerging EV battery reuse ecosystem. Here's

Marketplace's Elizabeth Troval. The factory in Taylor, Texas, will be run by Moment Energy. CEO

Edward Chang says it will use old batteries for less stressful kinds of energy storage.

Like powering commercial buildings, EV chargers, and whatnot.

And eventually back up power at utility scale. Any natural disasters and the grid breaks down,

well, then you can discharge the energy back into the grid to recharge it. Repurposing is vital

from an environmental perspective, says Jessica Dunn with the union of concerned scientists.

Even if a battery is at like 70, 80, even lower percent capacity, it's basically more environmentally friendly to repurpose that battery instead of sending it directly to recycling.

But these are early days and there are many hurdles to overcome before 2030 when we're

expected to see much bigger waves of retired EV batteries come through.

I'm Elizabeth Troval for Marketplace.

A crypto-based market where you can place bets on who wins, Kamala Harris or Donald Trump,

is now putting the odds of a Trump victory at two out of three, 66%. Now, if every person who will

vote on election day were placing an equal wager, this would be predictive. But as it stands,

polymarket, as it's called, is the sum of the hunches of people who are partial to

cryptocurrency. Public opinion polls may not be reliable either, but those show a race too close to

call. Yet in financial markets, the real ones, some investors are adjusting their portfolios

based on their election hunch. On Fridays, we consult economist Christopher Lowe at FHN Financial in New York.

I honestly would be very, very careful about betting on market consequences of an election.

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