After 12 years of development, a new category of range-boosting battery technology is moving into mass production for electric vehicles.
Sila, a Silicon Valley-based battery materials company with more than $930 million in funding, says it has finalized a mass manufacturing process for the first silicon-based anodes.
The company is calling its new material “Titan Silicon,” CEO Gene Berdichevsky said in an interview, and it’s in the later stages of qualification with automakers before a new factory begins production late next year.
Sila says Titan anodes will immediately boost maximum vehicle ranges by 20 percent.
Its first customer is Mercedes, which will use Titan anodes in its long-range EQG SUV, the electric version of the automaker’s boxy G-Class, starting in early 2025.
A concept model has been spotted testing in the Arctic ahead of the off-roader's debut next year.
Berdichevsky says that Sila will be able to make enough material for up to 200,000 EVs a year by 2026 — and enough for a million vehicles a year by 2028.
“We are ready to take on more automakers now,” Berdichevsky said. “There are three things that customers care about, and it’s range, range, and range. We are here, and we are ready for it.”
Sila is not the only company in the race for silicon-anode bragging rights. Tesla, whose long-range vehicles account for half of U.S. EV sales, has been talking publicly about developing its own silicon anode since at least 2020.
In Seattle, Group14 Technologies has secured $650 million and a supply agreement with Porsche, while OneD Battery Sciences based in Palo Alto, California, is working with General Motors. It’s not clear who will be first to scale up the technology.