2025 Summer Round Up - part 2
Autumn/fall is upon us 🍂
👮 Hyundai suffers a raid in the US
On 4th September, the joint LG Energy Solution and Hyundai plant in Georgia suffered a massive raid of its workers by immigration enforcement (ICE). 457 were arrested, 300 of whom were South Korean nationals. ICE released videos of them chained at the wrists and ankles. It was reported as an undercovering of a criminal centre, but other sources suggested that the company had maybe applied for not quite the right working visa for each worker to ‘not comply with every bureaucratic hurdle that served no legitimate purpose’.
The US government also changed the rules for H-1B visas, used by skilled workers, introducing a $100,000 charge. This prompted calls for workers to return to US immediately, and will make hiring highly skilled non-US workers for key industries effectively impossible.
💰 Big Bankruptcies
Natron Energy has gone out of business. It was supposed to build the world’s first sodium ion gigafactory in North Carolina. The increasingly low prices of LFP have made the lower energy density sodium ion cells less competitive, despite sodium’s higher abundance than lithium.
German VoltStorage has also run out of road and is winding down operations. It launched iron salt batteries back in 2016, and maintains that the technology worked but the market and company did not.
Despite positive news for Northvolt assets in Europe, the Quebec Northvolt project has been declared ‘dead’ with the local government cutting its investment. They have declared a $240 million loss.
🥩 Beefy BESS
In a race to the biggest cell in a BESS, EVE Energy brought out the ‘Mr Big’ 628 Ah battery cell. This was followed by Hithium announcing a 1175 Ah cell, and then BYD a 2710 Ah Blade cell, the biggest yet..
BYD are using that Blade cell in a 14.5 MWh single unit storage block. The overall aim seems to be to reduce the number of cells in a BESS container, getting rid of racks in parallel, and bringing down the amount of welding required. BYD have commented that this product is designed for long duration energy storage (LDES), and that this new design leads to a 70% reduction in system failure and 70% reduction in maintenance cost. CATL also announced a 9MWh BESS earlier in the year, stacking 2 containers on top of one another.
These larger systems are designed for LDES becoming more popular across the world, but will offer logistical challenges as the systems are housed in 20-40ft containers, which are not easy to transport.
🍬 Tidbits
🚨 South Korea have jailed the CEO of Aricell for 15 years over a fire that killed 23 workers last year. The judge ruled that the fire was ‘not unpredictable’ considering the operating conditions of the company.
🇨🇳🇪🇸 The plant in Zaragoza, Spain has 2000 Chinese workers coming to get it up and running. The plant is a joint venture between CATL and Stellantis.
☀️ Pakistan is experiencing a solar revolution. The grid has been unreliable and electricity prices climbing, so as solar panel prices have fallen citizens have taken it upon themselves to ensure their own power resilience. Thinktank Ember has reported that the country imported 17 GW of solar panels in 2024, doubling the previous year.
✍️ Verkor, PowerCo and ACC have writtten a letter to appeal for support in Europe through EU funds.
🧂 Electroflow is the latest LFP maker in the US, streamlining the production process to a potentially lower cost cathode active material, down to $2,500 per [metric] ton at scale.
🚔 Trump has pardoned Trevor Milton, of Nikola Motors, after the company went bankrupt and he was sentenced to 4 years in prison for deceiving investors about the company’s progress and products.
🛒 The UK’s BMS company Brill Power has been acquired by Palmer Energy Technology Ltd. SES AI has acquired UZ energy, ESS manager based in Shenzen. ExxonMobil has acquired Superior Graphite in order to launch into the synthetic graphite space.
🏭 Natrion has opened a new manufacturing site in New York state, for their Active Separator.
🌐 Standard Potential, our own Andrew’s company in NYC, has been running ‘Responsible Grid’ trials this summer hooking AC up to battery packs. The aim is to make the city grid more resilient, spreading periods of demand particularly for high energy appliances.
⛏️ The Trump administration wants 10% ownership of Thacker Pass after the Lithium mine received $2.26 billion in funding.
📰 What else we covered at Intercalation
From Cars to Combat Zones: Kush details what militaries need batteries for and how their requirements might differ to standard cell times.
One Year in a European Giga Scale LFP Factory: Issy interviews Morrow’s CEO.
American Mercantilism in 2025: Nick and Melissa dig into the history and opportunity around state interventionism in key industries.
Deep Sea Mining part 1: Claire takes us through the technology of deep sea mining and its environmental impacts.
Battery Insurance Basics: IronGrid cofounders uncover the essential nitty gritty behind insurance needs.
One man, one van and a podcast: Issy chats to Simon, who is on a mission to get Europe communicating better to build a battery industry.
Whack-a-mole: Ian, from Green Rocks, gave a nuanced and poetic discussion around mining and battery materials.
🌞 Thanks for reading!
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