Sila, the battery materials startup, started operations Tuesday at its facility in Moses Lake, Washington. The factory, which will initially be capable of making enough battery materials for 20,000 to 50,000 EVs, is the first large-scale silicon anode factory in the West, and future expansion could fulfill demand for as many as 2.5 million vehicles.
Silicon anodes promise to improve the energy density of lithium-ion batteries by as much as 50%. The technology, which Sila has been working on for the past 14 years, could be the best chance for the U.S. to gain the upper hand in a global race for battery supremacy, Sila co-founder and CEO Gene Berdichevsky argues.
“When you invent something new, it’s a lot easier to then produce it where you invent it,” he told TechCrunch.
Sila currently has agreements to supply anode material to Panasonic and Mercedes. Though automakers and their suppliers will be the factory’s main focus, Berdichevsky said his company has also been selling to drone manufacturers, satellite companies, and consumer electronics companies.
The startup isn’t the only company working on silicon anode materials. Group14, which also has operations in Moses Lake, currently produces its proprietary mix at a factory it developed with SK Innovation in South Korea. Amprius, a company based in Fremont, is currently producing megawatt-hours worth of its material in the U.S. and gigawatt-hours worth with partners in China.
But Sila’s Moses Lake factory, which has been under construction for nearly two years, “is really the first auto scale silicon anode plant in the U.S.,” Berdichevsky said. The company raised $375 million last year to help finance the project.
Sila’s new factory is capable of producing enough silicon anode material to power tens of thousands of EVs. Image Credits:Sila
In Washington State, Sila found a near perfect confluence of factors that allowed it to build the facility, including cheap hydropower, abundant land, and a nearby supplier of an important raw ingredient.
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“The cost structure of this technology is predicated on low cost energy — one of the big inputs — and then some key precursors, and we have that in Washington,” he said.
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