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All railcar stomach when the mercury drop , but electric vehicles suffer more than most as heaters draw more power and batteries charge more slow as the liquid state electrolyte inside thickens . Drivers in Chicago retrieve this out the hard style last January after many Teslasfailed to chargeduring a deep frost .
One startup , South 8 Technologies , say it can make cold - weather charging more reliable by fill battery with a pressurized , liquified gas electrolyte rather of a liquid one . In the process , it hop to whip the cost of lithium - ion battery by 30 % .
For automakers , if that preservation pans out , it might be too good to buy the farm up . “ The battery costs about a third of the entire railcar , ” CEO Tom Stepien tell TechCrunch .
South 8 title that its manufacturing technique can reduce the size of it of some of the costliest parts of a battery factory . And by injecting gas under pressure into the cell , South 8 can prevent the electrolyte from immobilise until -100 degrees C , well belowthe pointat which nearly every other answer has turn into a solid .
“ At -40 degree degree Celsius , we retain 75 % of the energy capacity , ” Stepien said . “ Everything else is a brick . ”
The party recently attracted new funding from Porsche Ventures in the form of a SAFE note , which will be applied to a Series B round that the company is set out to raise . Stepien say he could not disclose the size of Porsche Ventures ’ investment funds .
Porsche Ventures seem primarily concerned in South 8 ’s low-spirited - temperature public presentation , Stepien said . “ They want to keep their finger’s breadth on the pulse rate of where thing are headed , ” he said . LG , Anzu Partners and Lockheed are prior investors . The inauguration was spun out of enquiry at UC San Diego , which is fundamentally an EV paradise — itlast frozethere in 1963 .
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South 8 ’s core technology , which it call LiGas , is base on a accelerator pedal that is most commonly used as a refrigerant . ( Early scientific workpublishedby the institution team suggests it ’s difluoromethylene , otherwise known as R-32 . ) Getting the pressurized electrolyte into the mobile phone , though , presents a couple challenges . First , the approach only work with cylindrical cells , the sort used in Teslas , Rivians and Lucids . Today , most automakers use prismatic or pouch cellphone . Stepien said that the fellowship would debate applying the technology to prismatic cells in the future because they have a rigid can , but pouch cells do not , so they ’re off the mesa .
In cylindrical cells , South 8 ’s pressurized electrolyte require the final stage caps to be unassailable . The top cap also has to be welded on , and it requires a new pattern to include a valve through which the electrolyte is injected .
All that means different equipment , which poses a vault to acceptance commit the billions that battery producer have invested in their gigafactories . Still , Stepien hop that South 8 ’s technology will at last translate into savings that are too big to ignore .
For one , Stepien said South 8 ’s applied science will bucket along production time because it can boil down the formation cycles/second , in which batteries are first charged and discharged . The process can take days , and it helps form a level atop the anode that help the assault and battery hand its voltage . Stepien said South 8 can reduce that meter by 90 % .
“ Our standard protocol here was about 100 hours for cells we make for our customer . We ’ve done tests , and we ’ve seen no difference in performance with 10 hours , ” Stepien say . The gaseous state in the cell is itself a potent nursery gas pedal , generating over 600 clock time more global warming than an tantamount amount of carbon dioxide , agree to theIPCC . Should million of cells be fabricate with the electrolyte , battery recyclers will postulate to add together new steps to their procedure to assure the gas does n’t run to the atmosphere . Recyclers have like communications protocol for handling air conditioning and icebox compressor , though on a much smaller scale . Still , if South 8 can help develop a recycling solution while also reducing the telephone number of cells needed for cold - mood electron volt , their liquified accelerator electrolyte could be a last welfare for the clime .
fudge factor : The headline has been update to note that Porsche Ventures is the investor .
