Spencer Gore is having trouble starting his battery. But it doesn’t want its batteries to go into electric vehicles, at least not yet.
“There are a lot of interesting lower end segments of the automotive market that are underserved today and that can be reached faster than, say, a traction battery in an electric vehicle,” he told TechCrunch. Take the traditional 12-volt lead-acid battery that sits under the hood of every modern fossil-fuel vehicle. This is still a huge market, which has been exceeded by the production capability of lithium-ion batteries a few years ago.
“In this case, we’re still relying on 150-year-old technology,” Gore said.
In turn, Gore’s company Rock materials, uses chemistry invented about ten years ago. While he won’t reveal details, he says it’s much like what’s found in most electric vehicles today, with one key difference: it doesn’t contain lithium.
Instead, Bedrock Materials is developing a sodium-ion battery that is expected to be much cheaper than lithium-ion. The expected savings result from the abundance of sodium: there is approx 1000 times more sodium than lithium
Nevertheless, challenges still exist. Sodium-ion batteries don’t store as much energy as lithium-ion, and while they bring about down the price of lithium-ion, the difference is not enough to encourage hesitant automakers. Formulations that store enough energy to defeat lithium-ion have proven fragile, although Gore said his company’s chemistry solves that problem.
Ultimately, Gore would really like Bedrock Materials to sign a contract for electric vehicle batteries. But he argues it makes more sense to first introduce a product to a stagnant market, akin to starter batteries for cars and trucks that run on fossil fuels. “It’s classic ‘disruption from below.’ Start with something that’s really worse but cheaper, and work your way up as the technology gets better.”
To prove that sodium ion chemistry can replace lead acid in starter batteries, Bedrock Materials produces materials for third-party testing. To fund this enterprise, the company recently raised a $9 million seed round, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. The round was led by Trucks Venture Capital, Refactor Capital and Version One Ventures.
The startup also recently opened an R&D facility in Chicago, a city that hasn’t seen many battery startups. But Gore, who has worked at Tesla and battery materials startup Enovix, directed the company to Illinois in part because the cost of living is much cheaper than in Silicon Valley.
At Enovix, he noticed a continuing trend among recruits: “We basically had a bimodal talent pool, with fresh graduates who didn’t mind having five roommates, and then vice presidents who didn’t even live here – they just flew in for a week and flew home.” he said.
Battery scientists, on the other hand, are typically mid-career. They typically have a Ph.D. and a postdoc under their belts, and by the time they get a job in industry, “they’re 31 years old,” Gore said. “In the Bay Area, math just wouldn’t appeal to them.”
It also doesn’t hurt that the Chicago suburbs are home to Argonne National Labs, where years of research have greatly improved sodium-ion batteries. Now Gore believes it is able to launch.
Other battery manufacturers agree that sodium ions’ time has come. Chinese battery maker CATL has been producing sodium-ion batteries for several years, and China’s BYD and Sweden’s Northvolt have announced their very own plans to expand sodium-ion production lines. At the end of the decade, 150 gigawatt hours Production capability, most of which is situated in China, is expected to come back online.
Gore said China’s interest in sodium ions should spur other manufacturers. “We have seen Chinese cell manufacturers take steps very quickly to commercialize sodium ion technology, and we have seen them leave non-Chinese cell manufacturers behind when it comes to lithium iron phosphate. The obvious question is, will this happen again with sodium ions?” he said. He said corporations like Panasonic and LG had learned their lesson. “They don’t want to be left in the dust again.”