| | | This battery advance could make electric vehicles far cheaper
or the last seven years, a startup based in Alameda, California, has quietly worked on a novel anode material that promises to significantly boost the performance of lithium-ion batteries.
Sila Nanotechnologies emerged from stealth mode last month, partnering with BMW to put the company's silicon-based anode materials in at least some of the German automaker’s electric vehicles by 2023. A BMW spokesman told the Wall Street Journal the company expects that the deal will lead to a 10 to 15 percent increase in the amount of energy you can pack into a battery cell of a given volume. Sila’s CEO Gene Berdichevsky says the materials could eventually produce as much as a 40 percent improvement.
For EVs, an increase in so-called energy density either significantly extends the mileage range possible on a single charge or decreases the size and cost of the batteries needed to reach standard ranges. For consumer gadgets, it could alleviate the frustration of cell phones that can’t make it through the day, or it might enable power-hungry next-generation features like bigger cameras or ultrafast 5G networks.
Researchers have spent decades working to advance the capabilities of lithium-ion batteries, but those gains usually only come a few percentage points at a time. So how did Sila Nanotechnologies make such a big leap?
Berdichevsky, who was employee number seven at Tesla, and CTO Gleb Yushin, a materials scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, recently provided a deeper explanation of the battery technology in an interview with MIT Technology Review.
Read More – Technology Review
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