Breathe lands $21M Series B to predict battery performance

Few markets are moving as rapidly as China’s automotive sector. There, new models are rolled out in as little as 18 months, putting tremendous pressure on legacy Western automakers, which need four-plus years to go from concept to sales floor. “With the increasingly short development cycles in China, it’s driving a huge amount of cost and time focus,” Ian Campbell, co-founder and CEO of Breathe Battery Technologies, told TechCrunch. “In both geographies, in the East — in China and Asia — and in the West as well.” Much of that focus has been centered around batteries — the components that can make or break electric vehicle sales. Automakers are forced to predict where the market will be a few years out, but those forecasts don’t always pan out given how quickly the EV landscape is evolving. Making changes to physical components can be expensive and unpredictable, which is why Campbell’s startup has been trying to give batteries more flexibility via software. Breathe has developed a ... Read full article.