Amid a challenging environment for battery startups, Sila has raised $375 million to complete the construction of a U.S. factory that will roll out next-generation battery technology to customers. mercedes benz And PANASONIC By the end of 2025.
Sila, formerly known as Sila Nanotechnologies, will complete construction of its Moses Lake, Washington plant in the first quarter of next year, where the company will begin mass production of its branded Titan silicon anode material.
The all-equity Series G round — led by existing investor Sutter Hill Ventures, with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, Coatue, Perry Creek Capital and others — comes at a time when other electric vehicle battery companies are struggling to get their products to market and stay afloat.
earlier this year, Ionic material off Its doors and Umicore cuts its guidance Freyr Battery, a startup that joined the public markets in 2021 by merging with a special purpose acquisition company, due to an expected drop in electric vehicle sales This also failed to accelerate the production of its next-generation batteries.
“It’s obviously a very tough market for late-stage growth, with high capital expenditures and anything to do with EVs,” said Sila’s founder and CEO. Jean Berdichevsky “But we have a great technology, we’re moving forward, we’re on track with our factory, and that’s leading us to getting cars on the road, which is really a milestone that everybody in the world wants to see,” he told TechCrunch.
Silla’s ability Raise Such a large round in a challenging environment can be seen as a sign of confidence in the company’s approach to battery chemistry and its ability to scale up production. Berdichevsky, who was Tesla’s seventh employee before founding Sila in 2011, said Previously told TechCrunch If you can’t do the science right, it’s not enough that you do it in a fundamentally scalable way.
This is especially true in a world where hundreds of thousands of electric vehicles are expected to enter the market in the next few years, and automakers are rapidly looking for ways to bring their vehicles to market. End your dependency on China For critical battery materials.
Sila’s answer is to replace the graphite in the anode of lithium-ion batteries with silicon, a material that can be produced anywhere, not mined and processed in a specific region. Using silicon allows for a more local supply chain for critical battery materials and also creates a denser, cheaper battery cell that can help EVs charge faster, Berdichevsky says. And by changing just one component of the battery, cell manufacturers don’t have to drastically alter their production processes.
The anode is a key component of a battery that stores lithium when the battery is charging. Its counterpart, the cathode, stores lithium when the battery is discharging. Lithium moves back and forth between charge and discharge through the electrolyte liquid, and something called a separator keeps them from short-circuiting.
By using silicon in place of graphite, Sila’s products today have an increase in energy density of 20% to 25%, Berdichevsky says.
“In the future, we will see an increase in energy density by about 40% without changing anything in the battery itself,” he said.
In a statement, Sila said future releases of Titan silicon will reduce recharge times to less than 10 minutes and also reduce battery costs.
Sila has been supplying Titan silicon to auto customers for several years from its headquarters in Alameda, California, but only just now has the technology come to test vehicles. And Sila’s technology is already in the base model Mercedes Electric G-WagonWhich was recently launched in Beijing.
Berdichevsky says the Moses Lake facility allows for the scale and manufacturing standard for automotive series production. From there, automakers will need to achieve final validation qualification before bringing Sila’s battery technology into mass production cars.
In addition to Mercedes, Sila has publicly announced plans to supply its battery technology to Panasonic, which makes EV batteries for several automakers, most notably Tesla. Sila made its commercial debut in 2021 Whoop WearablesPlans to announce other automotive and consumer electronics customers in the future.
Berdichevsky says the Moses Lake facility is large enough that, with future expansion, Titan Silicon will be able to produce more than one million vehicles.
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