For years, scientists in laboratories from Silicon Valley to Boston have been searching for an elusive Potion of chemicals, minerals and metals that would allow electric vehicles to charge in minutes and travel hundreds of miles between charges.
A few of the scientists and the companies they founded are close to a major milestone. They are building factories to produce next- generation battery cells that will allow carmakers to begin road testing the technologies and determine whether they are safe and reliable.
In order to perfect manufacturing techniques the factory operations are limited. It will take a long time before the high- performance batteries are available in moderately priced cars. There is a chance of a revolution in electric mobility.
Electric vehicles could compete with fossil-fuel-powered vehicles for convenience and price if the technologies can be mass-produced. There could be a reduction in harmful emissions from automobiles. The inventors of the technologies could make a lot of money.
The emergence from cloistered laboratories into the harsh conditions of the real world is a moment of truth for the many companies working on new batteries and materials.
Making a few hundred battery cells in a clean room is much easier than making millions of them in a factory.
Jagdeep Singh, founder and chief executive of QuantumScape, a battery maker in San Jose, Calif., said that even though you have the entitlement to work, you can't make it work. You have to figure out how to make it in a way that is defect-free and uniform.
The value of battery companies that are traded publicly has been stripped due to the slump in tech stocks. It will be difficult for them to raise the money they need to pay their staff. They don't have much revenue because they haven't begun selling a product.
After it went public, the company was worth over $50 billion. It was worth about $4 billion.
The company is going ahead with a factory in San Jose that will be able to make hundreds of thousands of cells in less than a decade. The batteries will be tested to see if they can handle rough roads, cold snaps and heat waves.
If the batteries can be charged hundreds of times without losing their ability to store electricity, if they can survive a crash without bursting into flames, and if they can be made cheaply, the automakers will want to know.
Some of the new technologies may not live up to their promises. David Deak is a consultant on battery materials and he said that shorter charging times and longer range may hurt battery life. Mr. Deak said that most of the new material concepts compromise on something else.
With backing from Volkswagen, Bill Gates and a who's who of Silicon Valley figures, QuantumScape shows how much faith and money have been put in companies that claim to be able to fulfill all those requirements.
Mr. Singh founded the company after buying the first production car of the company. Mr. Singh believed that electric cars would be the future.
He said it was enough to show what could be. He realized that the only way to store more energy was to look for a chemistry breakthrough.
Mr. Singh, a professor at a university, and two other people collaborated. John Doerr was one of the first investors in Amazon. J.B. Straubel is a member of the board of directors.
The ceramic material that separates the positive and negative ends of the batteries was developed after years of experimentation. The technology makes it possible to substitute a solid material for the liquid electrolyte that carries energy between the positive and negative poles of a battery.
The first five years were spent looking for a material that would work. We spent five years working on how to make it in the right way after we thought we found one.
The factory in San Jose is about the size of four football fields. There were rows of empty cubicles waiting for new employees and machinery ready to be installed.
Dozens if not hundreds of other entrepreneurs have been pursuing the same technological goal in labs around Silicon Valley and elsewhere, drawing on the same research that fueled the growth of the Semiconductor and Software industries.
SES Artificial Intelligence is based on technology developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. SES has backing from a number of companies. SES opened a factory in China that is making prototype cells. The company will begin to supply large volumes to the automotive industry in the late 20th century.
SES shares have plummeted, but the CEO said he wasn't worried. He thought that was a good thing. Good people will survive when the market is bad. The industry will be helped by it.
SES and other battery companies say they have solved the scientific hurdles needed to make cells that are safer, cheaper and more powerful. It is a question of figuring out how to make money.
Doug Campbell is the chief executive of Solid Power, a battery maker backed by Ford Motor and BMW. Solid Power said in June that it had installed a pilot production line that would begin supplying cells for testing purposes by the end of the year.
Many of the start-ups in Silicon Valley have been created byTesla. Many of the company's battery experts left to work for other companies.
The co-founder of Sila, Gene Berdichevsky, is a veteran of the electric car company. Mr. Berdichevsky was born in the Soviet Union and moved to the US with his parents at the age of 9. He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees at the same time he became the seventh employee at the company.
The creation of the E.V. battery industry was made possible by the fact that people would buy electric cars. Everyone is competing to make a better electric car.
Sila is part of a group of start-ups that have developed materials that significantly improve the performance of existing battery designs. Group14 Technologies is near Seattle and OneD Battery Sciences is in Palo Alto.
All three of them have found a way to use Silicon to store electricity inside batteries. It's possible to hold more energy per pound of Silicon than it is of Graphene. The U.S. would no longer have to depend on Chinese refined graphite.
When charged, Silicon swells to three times its size, which could cause the components to fail. The chief technology officer of OneD spent a decade baking different combinations in laboratories crowded with equipment looking for ways to overcome that problem.
Sila, OneD, and Group14 are ramping up production in Washington state.
Sila said in May that it would supply Mercedes-Benz with its material from a factory in Washington. The material is going to be used in luxury SUVs.
Group14'sSilicon material will be used in a limited number of vehicles. The CEO of Group14 said that a major manufacturer would use the company's technology to allow a car to charge in 10 minutes.
The benefits of electric vehicles can be found at that point.
There is plenty of room for more than one company to succeed because of the strong demand for batteries. There will be failures with hundreds of other companies trying to get a piece of the $1 trillion electric car market.
Every new transformational industry starts with a lot of players. There will be that here.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
