Companies Make Progress in Using Silicon to Boost EV Lithium-ion Batteries

"Transportation is going to electrify much faster than people realize," says Rick Luebbe, chief executive officer of Group14 Technologies. So this weekend the Seattle Times paid a visit to their small manufacturing plant in rural Western Washington working on becoming one of the companies supplying a crucial component:Inside this building, carbon is infused with a silicon gas to produce a black powdery substance that high-profile investors hope will be a key component of the next generation of electric car batteries enabling them to travel farther between plug-ins, recharge faster and cost less. "It's transformational," said Rick Luebbe, chief executive officer of Group14 Technologies, which opened the Maltby plant in 2021 and has raised $441 million in funding. The company employs nearly 100 people, and the industrial workplace north of Woodinville has the excitement of a startup company. A research laboratory is under construction in one corner of the building as production is underway elsewhere. Group14 is one of more than 20 companies launched in a global quest to improve the lithium-ion battery - mainstay of the fledgling electric car industry - by including more silicon.... Within the next decade, two companies plan to make Washington a hub of this emerging technology. Group14, which has drawn Porsche AG as a lead investor, and Sila, an Alameda, California, company that is partnering with Mercedes-Benz, both have announced plans to open large-scale plants east of the Cascades in Moses Lake.... The silicon technology also has applications for many other battery-powered products ranging from cellphones that can last longer between charges to drones and aircraft that could stay aloft for more hours of flight... Company officials at Group14 and Sila say they have developed silicon products that can be blended with graphite - or replace it entirely - without unduly compromising battery life.... "Generally, every customer we're working with is getting the cycling they need for commercial deployment," Luebbe said. Gene Berdichevsky, Sila's chief executive, said Sila's technology, also proprietary, "achieves and exceeds" automotive industry specification even when silicon entirely replaces graphite. Some automotive companies are betting that silicon does have an important role to play in the next generation of batteries... Mercedes-Benz AG, which this year announced it's opening a new battery plant in Alabama, invested in Sila in 2019. Then, last May, the company announced it would use the Sila silicon technology for electric G-Class vehicles that will start production in the middle of this decade. Uwe Keller, directory of battery development at Mercedes-Benz AG, said his company is involved in extensive research with Sila's silicon product to determine how it best can be incorporated into a next generation of batteries. But he expects Sila's technology will boost electric car battery range by 15 to 20%.... Berdichevsky, Sila's chief executive, who worked at Tesla in its early years and co-founded Sila in 2011, said his company plans to start producing silicon product from Moses Lake to send to Mercedes-Benz in the second half of 2024.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.