May News Roundup
Things that are trending upward: battery SPACs, electric bus fires, short seller attacks, and Dahn Lab cycle life estimates
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🛠 Industry News
BACK to SPAC
Amprius, the silicon nanowire company founded by Stanford battery prof Yi Cui, is going public via SPAC, a financial instrument whose popularity has waned considerably since reaching a fever pitch last year. Recent SPACs in the battery industry include Li-Cycle, QuantumScape, and The Metals Company (née DeepGreen Inc.), whose disastrous SPAC resulted in key investors withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in promised funding.
With the SPAC, Amprius hopes to raise north of $400 million to fund its future expansion plans, which include the development of a high-volume production facility in either Texas or Georgia. According to Amprius CEO Kang Sun, the company desperately needs more production capacity. Currently, Amprius is capable of developing 250 kWh of material, which is sold to customers including the U.S. Army and Airbus for their Zephyr unmanned aerial system.
On the technology side, Amprius is notable for developing Yi Cui’s early silicon nanowire research into an industrial process — albeit a costly one. This is why Amprius has targeted high-value end applications like eVTOL, aerospace, and the defence industry. To lower the cost of their silicon nanowire deposition process, Amprius has announced that they plan to partner with Centrotherm, a solar production equipment manufacturer, to develop equipment for their future high-volume plant.
If you’d like to read more about Amprius’s technology, take a look at part one of our Silicon Series:
Sila + Mercedes = silicon-powered G-Wagons
Amprius wasn’t the only silicon startup making waves last month: Sila Nanotechnologies, led by early Tesla engineer Gene Berdichevsky, revealed that their silicon anode material will be incorporated into future models of the Mercedes-Benz electric G-Class or “G-Wagon” by mid-decade. The production capacity necessary for this commitment was secured earlier in May when Sila purchased a 600,000 square-foot facility in Washington which they intend to develop into a 10-50 GWh anode production site.
Unlike Amprius’s 100% silicon anodes, Sila’s anode material is a silicon-carbon composite. This has the potential to be simpler and cheaper to produce than Amprius’s product, but may come at the expense of higher energy density. On a cell level, Sila promises “more than 800 Wh/L” volumetric energy density for their upcoming G-Wagon cells, whereas Amprius claims to have products starting at 890 Wh/L. For comparison’s sake, top-shelf graphite-based batteries today can offer energy densities of 751 Wh/L. (Side note: all these numbers shrink when you scale to the pack level, where structural, safety, and electrical components lower the overall density to a still-impressive 450 Wh/L.)
We’ve commended Sila in the past for their measured approach to introducing next-gen battery tech into products, first focusing on wearables such as the Whoop 4.0 before moving onto EVs. This marks the first time (to out knowledge) that a major auto OEM has taken the plunge and committed to using a next-gen battery chemistry in an upcoming product. Let’s see how things play out!
If you’d like to read more about Sila’s tech, click the link below to read part four of our Silicon Series:
Another month, another Bolloré solid-state battery fire
Paris was the site of not one, but two electric bus fires in April. The buses, built by Bolloré subsidiary Bluebus and operated by Paris’s public transit authority RAPT, were in active service when they burst into flames. No injuries were reported, and all 149 of RAPT’s Bluebuses have since been recalled.
Xinyan @Xinyan_Huang
Electric bus fire 🔥🚎 🔥https://t.co/bVgMjhgIQR https://t.co/DPJMewTPjdThe buses featured a 441 kWh solid-state lithium metal polymer (LMP) battery built by another Bolloré subsidiary, Blue Solutions. Ouest France reports that Bolloré has identified the cause of the fires, which CEO Cyrille Bolloré claims is due to an electrical issue and not an “electrochemical defect.”
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Bolloré battery-powered buses catch fire. Back in October, we wrote about a massive bus depot fire in Germany which was very likely caused by a faulty Blue Solutions battery pack. Those buses were built by Mercedes under their eCitaro-G line, and curiously featured a recall months earlier due an “insulation fault that could lead to short circuits.”
To be fair to Bolloré, solid-state batteries aren’t unique in their ability to violently and spontaneously combust — The Next Web reporter Cate Lawrence has helpfully compiled an ongoing list of e-moped and e-scooter battery fires into a Google Doc. ICE vehicles aren’t fireproof either, of course, as evidenced by podcaster Noah Kulwin just this week:
What is unique about solid-state batteries is their selling point as an extremely safe, noncombustible alternative to traditional liquid electrolyte-based batteries — Blue Solutions has claimed in the past that their batteries are “safer than lithium-ion battery technology.” Not everyone has to adopt Nissan’s strategy of referring to solid-state batteries as a “potential bomb,” but it would be nice to see more companies and researchers ditch ‘safety’ as a marketing buzzword for the tech.
Investments and lawsuits for Li-Cycle
The past few weeks have been especially busy for Li-Cycle, the Koch-backed Canadian battery recycler. Here’s a rundown of some of their recent goings-on, both good and bad:
Short seller Blue Orca Capital published a report alleging problematic leadership and accounting issues
Mining giant Glencore announced a strategic partnership which includes a $200 million investment and agreements for recycling offtake
A class action lawsuit repeating many of the allegations found in Blue Orca’s report was launched
Li-Cycle opened their “Arizona Spoke” facility in Gilbert, Arizona
It’s been awhile since we’ve seen a short seller report aimed at a battery company. Last year, QuantumScape came under fire from Scorpion Capital, who alleged that the solid-state company was a “scam” and “made Theranos look like amateurs” (hyperbolic language is a feature of these things).
While we can’t comment on the financial side of Li-Cycle’s business, we can at least speak to their technology: Li-Cycle is notable for being one of only a few companies seeking a purely hydrometallurgical route for recycling battery waste, eschewing any kind of thermal pretreatment or pyrolysis step in their process. While the goal of this approach is lofty (burning things is bad), in practice, it’s very difficult to scale.
A 2020 report from German recycler ACCUREC determined that no industrial-scale recyclers were able to avoid using a thermal process in their plants. Without thermal treatment, recyclers have to incorporate additional costly steps to 1) treat corrosive gasses during disassembly and 2) improve the purity of intermediate black mass products.
Li-Cycle, importantly, wasn’t included in this report, and it’s possible they’ve overcome these challenges. It would certainly be nice to get more details about their production process.
🔬 Research News
A 100-year battery (part two)
Last month we wrote about the so-called century batteries coming out of Jeff Dahn’s lab (which, full disclosure, this author is a member of). While there was only a meeting abstract and the original million mile battery paper to link to previously — the full “century battery” paper has now been published.
Dennis Kopljar @DennisKopljar
And here's the corresponding paper https://t.co/uhP8nFXvP1 "NMC #battery 🔋 cells, balanced & charged to 3.8V, show better coulombic efficiency, less capacity fade & higher energy density compared to LFP cells & are projected to yield lifetimes approaching a century at 25 °C" 🚀 https://t.co/J64KYyo6VNIn the paper, LFP and NMC pouch cells were cycled for sake of comparison. Like the million mile battery paper, the NMC cells featured the blisteringly successful combination of single crystal NMC532, artificial graphite, and low upper cutoff voltages. Thanks to some leftover cells from earlier hybrid Li-ion/Li-metal anode research, the NMC cells only had enough graphite to be cycled up to 3.8V, which allowed the cells to use LiFSI as the electrolyte salt.
After 6 months of 0.5C/0.5C cycling at high temperatures (70°C!), the NMC cells had 95% capacity retention and negligible impedance growth, even better than the LFP cells. Extrapolation at the end of the paper showed that room temp versions of these cells could easily last decades — perhaps even a century.
While some have taken the results as an attack on LFP, it’s more a demonstration of the known principles which allow NMC to last a long time (use single crystal NMC, limit charging to voltages below the dreaded H2-to-H3 phase transition) and the utility of LiFSI as an electrolyte salt when high voltages are avoided.
Pitfalls to avoid in paper writing
Kang Xu, the esteemed electrolyte specialist at U.S. Army Research Laboratory, wrote a short discussion about common mistakes and accidental misrepresentations he often encounters in battery papers. Examples include the miscalculation of energy density, the conflation of high cycle numbers with long cycle life, and a host of electrolyte-specific properties that touch on his area of expertise.
The paper recalls a previous Intercalation favourite, Patrik Johansson’s Ten Ways to Fool the Masses When Presenting Battery Research, but replaces the (expertly-tuned) humour of Johansson’s paper with an earnestness and humility that you don’t often see in this field. For example, here’s how Xu finishes off the article:
It should be noted that my own early publications may have contained some of the errors mentioned here; science progresses by learning from our own errors, as well as by learning from others. As such, this article does not intend to demean any research effort, but to raise awareness of common problems, so that the battery literature becomes more reliable and reproducible.
🚀 Startup Tracker
Group14 (Washington, USA) raises $400m Series C for silicon anode battery tech led by Porsche .
6K (Massachusetts, USA) raises $102m Series D for additive manufacturing metal powders as well as deployment of cathode production plants in its 6K Energy division.
Morrow Batteries (Norway) raises €100m to kick off battery plant setup in Arendal.
Blue Whale Materials (Washington, USA) raises $80m through private equity to build multiple battery recycling plants in US/Europe.
Mangrove Lithium (Canada) raises $12m Series B to scale lithium production and recovery.
Green Li-ion (Singapore) raises $11.5m for battery recycling.
Princeton NuEnergy (New Jersey, USA) raises $7m seed round for Li-ion battery recycling using “LPAS (low-temperature plasma-assisted separation) direct recycling process”.
🎧 On our reading/listening list
Technology Connections: The tech which can charge an electric car in 10 minutes
The Next Web: Electric mobility is hot, but its lithium-ion batteries are burning
VICE: There Aren’t Enough Batteries in the World to Power Our Huge Cars
Battery Power: 100-Year Batteries and Gigafactories at the 2022 International Battery Seminar
Electric Autonomy: Electricity access in Ontario under spotlight as questions hover about previously unannounced LG Chem battery supply factory
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