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Spencer Gore has a shelling startup . But he does n’t desire his batteries to finish up in electric vehicles , at least not yet .
“ There are a bunch of interesting downmarket section of automotive that are underserved today that are faster to get into than , say , the traction battery in EVs , ” he told TechCrunch . Take the traditional 12 - volt lead - acid battery that sit under the strong-armer of every dodo - fuel vehicle on the road today . It ’s still a monumental securities industry , having been surpassed by Li - ion production electrical capacity justa few years ago .
“ There , we ’re still relying on 150 - year - old technology , ” Gore say .
By contrast , Gore ’s company , Bedrock Materials , is using a chemistry that was invented about a 10 ago . Though he wo n’t disclose the particular , he does say that it ’s like to what ’s found in most EVs today with one major difference of opinion : There ’s no Li .
Instead , Bedrock Materials is recrudesce a atomic number 11 - ion bombardment , which promise to be dramatically tinny than Li - ion . The anticipated price savings stems from Na ’s teemingness : Earth has about1,000x moresodium than atomic number 3 .
Still , challenges remain . Sodium - ion battery do n’t harbor as much energy as lithium - ion , and while they undercut Li - ion in price , the differential has n’t been enough to lure hesitant automakers . The preparation that store enough vigour to dispute Li - ion have prove to be brittle , though Gore said his company ’s chemistry addresses that problem .
Eventually , Gore would like to see Bedrock Materials land a declaration for EV batteries . But he argues that it makes more horse sense to first launch a product in a more stagnant market , like starter batteries for fossil fuel - powered cars and trucks . “ It ’s Greco-Roman ‘ disrupt from the bottom . ’ begin with something that is honestly worse , but it ’s cheaper , and work your means up from there as the engineering gets better . ”
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To evidence its sodium - ion chemical science can supersede lead story - acid in starter batteries , Bedrock Materials is producing materials for testing by third parties . To fund the effort , it recently raised a $ 9 million seed round , the company entirely told TechCrunch . The round was led by Trucks Venture Capital , Refactor Capital and Version One Ventures .
The inauguration also latterly opened an R&D facility in Chicago , a city that has n’t host a flock of battery inauguration . But Gore , who used to do work at Tesla and bombardment materials startup Enovix , steer the company to Illinois in part because the cost of living is importantly cheaper than in Silicon Valley .
At Enovix , he noticed a trend among enlistee that nonplus with him : “ We basically had a bimodal natural endowment distribution of sassy new grads who were fine with birth five roommates , and then VPs who were n’t even endure here — they were just flying in for the week and flying back home , ” he said .
Battery scientists , on the other handwriting , tend to be mid - life history . They usually have a doctorate and a postdoc under their belt , and by the clip they get a job in industry , “ they ’re 31 years onetime , ” Gore said . “ In the Bay Area , the math just would n’t do work for them . ”
It also does n’t hurt that the Chicago suburb are home to Argonne National Labs , where years of inquiry have innovative sodium - ion batteries considerably . Now Gore thinks it ’s ready to fetch to market .
Other battery manufacturers agree that atomic number 11 - ion ’s fourth dimension has come . Formosan battery manufacturer CATL has been producing sodium - ion batteries for a few age , and China ’s BYD and Sweden ’s Northvolt have announced their own plans to add sodium - ion production lines . By the terminal of the decade,150 gigawatt - hoursof output capacity , the bulk of it in China , are predict to come online .
China ’s interest in sodium - ion should be a awake - up call to other producers , Gore said . “ We ’ve run across the Taiwanese cell makers move very rapidly to commercialize sodium ion technology , and we watch how they left non - Taiwanese cell makers in the rubble when it came to atomic number 3 - iron - orthophosphate . The obvious enquiry is , is that going to materialize again with sodium ion ? ” he said . He said caller like Panasonic and LG have learned their lesson . “ They do n’t want to be left in the dust again . ”
