Solid Power raised $20m as the company powers its way through the EV battery race

Solid Power raised $20m as the company races to make its new prototype the industry standard for EV batteries everywhere.

Solid-state battery maker Solid Power raised $20m from companies like Samsung, A123 Systems, and Hyundai Cradle to scale up its technology in hopes to reign supreme over all EV batteries. 

Solid Power raised $20m as the company powers its way through the EV battery race

According to the company, it already has a working prototype of an all-solid-state rechargeable, lithium-metal battery, AKA the holy grail of innovation in the battery market. But, wait… 

What’s all this talk about ‘solid-state’?

As technology advances, batteries of the future will need to carry more energy in the same size requirements of today’s batteries. 

To get there, chemists need to use materials with “higher energy density” than batteries used today — Solid Power claims its prototype can store 2-3x the energy of current lithium-ion.

Founded in 2012, Solid Power employs battery researchers and engineers in a 21k-square-foot facility along the front range of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, and they plan to build another facility with the money raised.

The battery race is cooking with gas now… 

In the first half of 2018 alone, investors have pumped double the amount into battery startups than they invested in all of 2017.

Bloomberg projects that as electric-vehicle adoption increases, the market for batteries is going to grow from almost 100 gigawatt-hours today to more than 1.5k GWh by 2030.

And Solid Power already has an ‘in’ with the EV industry: Last year, it partnered with BMW to develop the company’s solid-state batteries to tailor their tech toward automotive requirements for “high performance” electric vehicles.

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