February News Roundup

Lawsuits in "Silicon Anode" Valley, new lithium in India, billions upon billions for batteries in the US, and a non-academic perspective on the future of lithium-based batteries

Feb 27

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🛠 Industry News

Turmoil in “Silicon” Valley

Silicon anodes have been a popular choice among battery researchers and manufacturers due to their high energy density and so-called “drop-in” chemistry. However, recently, a new wave of conflicts has arisen. The past couple of months has been tumultuous for companies in and around the "Silicon Valley" of battery technology. In the last 2 months alone:

Enovix (silicon anode battery maker) saw several execs leave the company. CEO/Co-Founder Harrold Rust left in December, and CTO/Co-Founder Ashok Lahiri left this month after the company failed to hit commercial deadlines for scaleup. Scaling up new chemistries through production is always challenging. It’s been done before where a company will have different leaders during different phases of its life and will bring on Raj Talluri from Micron Technology. It could be interesting, given how much parallel there is between Enovix’s tech and semiconductors.

Enovix uses "precisely cut electrodes that are laser cut and then stacked side by side and to hold that whole series of electrodes together, we wrap it in a stainless steel constraint system" - Ashok Lahiri, CTO

Meanwhile, a patent battle between US-based Group14 and UK-based Nexeon over a silicon-carbon anode has been brewing. Seattle-based patent attorney and litigator Howard Lim writes, “Group14 alleges that it shared highly confidential trade secrets on its carbon scaffold with Nexeon for a due diligence. Purportedly after Nexeon's bid to acquire Group14 fell through, Nexeon filed its own patent applications on the Si-C composite.” We found a helpful timeline of events:

Group14 and Nexeon discuss a partnership (2016)
Nexeon offered to acquire Group14 but Group14 declined (2017)
Nexeon offered to licence Group14’s tech but was declined (2018)
Nexeon filed several patents, which Group14 claims is stolen tech (2019).

In addition, Nexeon previously filed a dispute back in 2016 against OneD and EaglePitcher (who licences OneD’s patents) for OneD’s SINANODE technology infringing two of Nexeon’s patents (8,597,831 and 8,940,437).

In a space that’s so crowded with silicon anode flavours (we are tracking 25 companies working on silicon alone) and in a market that’s so hot for batteries and electric vehicles, it’s not that surprising that lawsuits are going on where companies are going after each other for similar technologies.

We wrote about all of these companies in our Silicon Series (published in 2021): Enovix, Group14, Nexeon, OneD

Do we have enough lithium?

Giving a shoutout to fellow Substack author Hannah Ritchie of Our World In Data, who recently wrote about lithium.

Sustainability by numbers

Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?

People have often worried that the world would run out of fossil fuels [see Hubbert’s curve on ‘peak oil’]. This concern is shifting to the minerals we need to build low-carbon technologies. “The world doesn’t have enough lithium” is a common pushback against a move to electric vehicles…

3 months ago · 68 likes · 37 comments · Hannah Ritchie

Long story short, we’ll need to mine more lithium to keep up with the demand for a battery transition. About 250-450k tonnes by 2030 (see graph below) and about 800k tonnes by 2040.

While most of today’s lithium mines come from Australia, Chile, China, and Argentina, countries are trying to increase independence on foreign resources. One example is India, which has largely depended on foreign supplies for critical metals. Recently, 5.9 million tons of lithium deposits have been discovered in Jammu and Kashmir in India, and the country will look to explore domestic lithium production. A reserve like this can be a significant boost to a country’s position in the global batter race. However, many questions still need to be answered about the quality of lithium and the mining/permitting process in India. A lot of work needs to be done to go from resources (what the world has) ⇒ reserves (resources we can feasibly extract) ⇒ battery-grade raw material (what we can use).

Simon Moores @sdmoores

#Lithium in India: not a game changer but interesting. Shows the world is looking for lithium & that it is not a rare element Caution this with the usuals: big different between defined resources & reserves Making battery grade lithium chemicals = harder

bbc.co.ukJammu and Kashmir: India’s first big lithium find boosts electric car hopesIndia finds significant reserves of the element, vital in rechargeable batteries, for the first time.

NAATBATT also recently published a comprehensive report on the challenges and recommendations for the US lithium industry.

A billion for you, a billion for you

Two blockbuster pieces of funding news have occurred in the US battery world:

Tom Randall @tsrandall

Redwood Materials just won a $2 billion loan from the same US fund that helped Tesla develop the Model S in 2010. That fund was dormant for 12 years, but this is now its fourth loan in six months to build out a US battery supply chain 1/

bloomberg.comBloomberg - Are you a robot?

Redwood Materials has secured a tidy $2B from the Department of Energy Loan Program Office (LPO) to recycle batteries and produce critical materials in their McCarran Nevada site. Their first two products include 36 kT of copper foil and 100 kT of cathode active materials. These plans were also laid out in a series of pieces with MIT Technology Review, revealing that only 30% of their current cathode product comes from recycled material. The majority is still made of virgin mined minerals. However, cathode manufacturing still represents a bolstering of the US battery production supply chain, which is being encouraged by the IRA’s $7,500 “made in America” EV tax credit. Redwood’s CEO, JB Straubel, was interviewed by the LPO director Jigar Shah earlier in 2022.

Ford has announced $3.5B in partnership with CATL to build an LFP battery plant in Michigan. The investment will be a wholly owned project by Ford, which is unique compared to the GM-LG Ultium joint venture. Ultium operates in Ohio, but the GM-LG partnership has since broken down. Ford’s plant is expected to open in 2026 and will employ ~2500 people. CATL will be involved by licensing its technology to Ford. CATL, headquartered in China, is the largest EV battery manufacturer in the world. Geopolitical sparks have already been flying between Ford and CATL: when US states were bidding for sites, the Virginia governor called the initiative a “Trojan horse relationship”. Last year, CATL also postponed progress on their US manufacturing plans after Nancy Pelosi didn’t visit them and visited Taiwan instead.

Manufacturing is never without hiccups - in recent news, Ford has paused production of their electric F150 trucks to investigate a possible battery issue which has blossomed into a case of potential corporate espionage with partner SK…

Hello, HiNa

Kevin Gunan Shang @KevinGShang

HiNa launched three #sodiumion #battery cells products: Cylindrical: 140Wh/kg, 2-3000 cycle Prismatic: 145Wh/kg, 2-3000 cycle Large-prismatic: 155Wh/kg, 2-6000 cycle HiNa also put Na-ion batteries into Sehol EX10 test vehicle. 25KWh, Cell: 140Wh/kg, Pack: 120Wh/kg. #battchat

Chinese company HiNa has become the first manufacturer to kit out a passenger EV with sodium-ion cells. While they’ve already been deployed in 2 wheelers and for grid storage, this Sehol EV pack had 25 kWh to provide 252 km of range. Cell-level energy densities were also shared by Kevin G. Shang in the tweet above. When compared to the regular Li-ion Sehol EV, the Na-ion battery pack has a 15% lower gravimetric energy density. Perhaps the most impressive metrics for the sodium ion packs were their fast charge and low-temperature capability: 10-80% SOC in 20 min (3-4C rate), and 90% capacity retention at –20 °C.

For some, manufacturing continues to be hard.

Britishvolt will likely be acquired by Australian company Recharge to revive the fallen British would-be gigafactory. Interestingly, financial firm EY is under fire as they acted as advisors for Britishvolt and their administrators. This might have been a conflict of interest, especially when Britishvolt was paying EY £500,000 per month.

Peter Campbell @Petercampbell1

🚨EY in spotlight over "conflict of interest" at Britishvolt🚨 💰EY paid £500k/month by BV 💰BV execs joined straight from EY 💰Then EY named as administrators 💰EY insider: "You have to laugh" Story with @_MODwyer, @gillplimmer1 & @harrydempsey88: ft.com/content/0f7085…

ft.comSubscribe to read | Financial TimesNews, analysis and comment from the Financial Times, the worldʼs leading global business publication

Sadly, this followed after UK battery factory Britshvolt was placed under administration due to bankruptcy, and up to 300+ staff were let go. We put out a Britishvolt Alumni Directory for anyone looking to hire ex-BV talent. Manufacturing is extremely difficult, and this Linkedin article from OLA Electric’s manufacturing officer is a great writeup on what exactly is so difficult about it.

Intercalation Station

Britishvolt Alumni Directory

We’re covering the recent news of BritishVolt’s closure and sharing a directory of former employees on the job market. If you’re looking to hire talented engineers, scientists, technicians, or admin in the United Kingdom (or if you know someone who is), reach out to the folks in the directory below. If you’re a former Britishvolt employee and would like…

2 months ago · 6 likes · Intercalation Station

⚗️ Research News

UK’s Faraday Battery Challenge awarded £27m of grants to various organisations for research-to-commercialisation work, including OXLID for lithium-sulfur batteries, Nyobolt for fast-charging batteries, Altilium for critical metal recovery, and many more.
A juggernaut of an article published by 3 industry/former-academic titans, James Frith, Matt Lacey & Ulderico Ulissi: “A non-academic perspective on the future of lithium-based batteries”. The closing two paragraphs are very near and dear to our mission at Intercalation Station:

Nowadays, there is too much research that confuses, rather than adds to, progress, and we need joint action from stakeholders, industry, academia, and publishers to solve this issue. Resources should not be squandered on the basis of (often unknowingly, potentially in good faith) biased and/or unreliable studies or well-sounding press releases. Indeed, a more critical, engineering-led, numerical, and transparent approach to scientific research is certainly required.
As a closing message, the reader should bear in mind that transparency is a key requirement, and the lack of adequate, impartial, and exhaustive communication is usually the main reason for the divide between academia and industry or, more broadly, for the failure of collaborative research activities.

The authors will be giving a seminar on this article on March 2nd. Sign up at this link.