Sila, a maker of battery materials cofounded and led by a former Tesla engineer, will supply its silicone anode material to Panasonic’s U.S. battery plants. The startup says it can boost range and cut charging time for electric vehicles.
The Alameda, California-based company, which previously announced plans to supply anodes for a future electric Mercedes-Benz SUV, will produce materials for Panasonic at its plant in Moses Lake, Washington, which is under construction. Sila CEO Gene Berdichevsky declined to share financial details of the deal, which begins after 2025.
“Our ambition is to build up to a million vehicles worth of technology annually in 2028 at Moses Lake, and Panasonic’s ambition is to build several million vehicles worth of batteries,” he told Forbes. “I’d say the ceiling is quite high for what we could do together.”
Panasonic, a core supplier of lithium-ion cells to Tesla since 2008, jointly operates the largest battery plant in North America with the Elon Musk-led company, Tesla’s original Gigafactory, in Sparks, Nevada. The Osaka, Japan-based company is also building another $4 billion battery plant in Kansas to supply packs for other automakers.
While there are many battery plants under construction across the U.S. to make cells for electric cars and trucks, the EV market is still heavily reliant on anodes, cathodes and graphite — vital components largely made in China, South Korea or Japan. Sila, along with startups including Redwood Materials, led by Tesla cofounder JB Straubel, and Michigan’s ONE (which just replaced founder Mujeeb Ijaz as CEO amid financial challenges) are trying to jumpstart a domestic supply base for those essential materials.
Berdichevsky says the silicon-based nanomaterial Sila makes is “the first market-proven graphite anode replacement.” Sila estimates that boosts EV range by 20% currently, and its goal is to double that to a 40% range increase eventually. It also can reduce charging time to as little as 10 minutes.
China, which controls the global supply of graphite for EV batteries, has indicated it will tighten exports of the material to the U.S., likely in response to new rules laid out by the Biden Administration that prevent EV batteries with large amounts of Chinese materials from qualifying for federal tax incentives.
“There’s 100 kilos of graphite in a vehicle (like the Tesla Model S) and our technology can replace that 100 kilos of graphite with something like 20 kilos, depending on how it’s used,” Berdichevsky said. Sila has raised $925 million from private investors and is building its Mosese Lake plant with a $100 million federal grant received last year.
Read the full article here
