Everyone in the US seems to be struggling to ramp up new battery plants. What the US needs to do, says Mark Willey, is put more R&D effort into battery process technology, not just battery chemistry. He says there are good lessons from the semiconductor industry that points the way out of production hell. Mark is the Senior VP of Customer Success at Voltaiq, and he explains how their technology can help improve production yields at battery plants.

EV batteries are heavy. Too heavy. But Factorial Energy says that it’s semi-solid state batteries are so energy dense that automakers can use batteries that are half as big and half as heavy. Better still, they can be made with 80-85% of the existing manufacturing equipment to make today’s lithium batteries. JJ Livingston, VP of sales for Factorial, talks about the progress they’re making and when they’ll be ready for mass production.

What if you could make all the graphite needed for batteries from waste wood products? NanoTerraTech is making battery-grade graphite using raw materials that normally get burned or used for mulch. So not only does it have a cost advantage, it has a zero net carbon process. Scott Farnham, the CTO of the company, talks about why automakers are so interested in their technology.

Solid state batteries could be a game changer for EVs. But they’re still several years away from being production ready. What are the roadblocks to overcome? Rashid Farahati, the director of engineering at Schaeffler, explains what’s holding them up, and how they’re overcoming it.

Pouch, prismatic or cylindrical? Celanese doesn’t care what kind of battery cell an automaker wants to use. It’s got a family of polymers to make battery packs that can accommodate an kind of cell shape. Better still it has heating and cooling solutions that can be incorporated directly into the pack design. Tom Kelly, the SVP of Engineered Materials at Celanese presents their solutions.

Safety is a big concern with EVs. Automakers want to do anything they can to prevent thermal events in electric vehicles. So Schaltbau came up with a novel way to make high voltage DC to DC bidirectional contactors. Carolyn Sauer, the director of business development, explains how Schaltbau’s bidirectional contactors are different from anyone else’s.

Plugging in an electric car is easy breezy. But what if you’re running fleets of autonomous electric cars and there’s no one there to plug it in? That’s why Forvia-Hella developed the tech to have charge ports on cars automatically open when they pull into a charging station. That way a robot can plug it in. Timo Krokowski, the vice president of program management at Forvia-Hella, talks about that technology as well as all the other EV components they’ve developed.

Anovion is a relatively new company that makes synthetic graphite for battery production in the US. The company was started before the Infrastructure Act or Inflation Reduction Act, but it’s timing couldn’t be better. Chip Dunn, the Chairman and co-founder of the company, talks about how they’re ramping up production so North American battery manufacturers can source their graphite locally without going overseas.

Video of Anovion’s Groundbreaking Ceremony in Georgia: https://vimeo.com/861715752

Vitesco is so eager to show automakers its EV inverter technology that it modified a Hyundai Ioniq 5 for quick A to B comparisons. Anand Gandhi, the Head of Technical Innovation for Vitesco in North America, explains how this demonstration car gives automakers hands-on experience with different drivable configurations so they can evaluate the inverter’s performance.

Our Next Energy is going beyond making batteries for EVs. It’s expanding into grid storage for solar and wind generation. Nick Twork, senior vice president of ONE, talks about the company’s plans to use its battery technology to create jobs in coal country.