The electric vehicle transition is really a story about China. There, subsidies have helped juice not just automakers, but the entire battery supply chain behind them. Those incentives, plus decades of industrial policy focused on controlled critical mineral supply chains, has left American and European automakers flat footed.
Take graphite, for example. Every lithium-ion battery today, regardless of the chemistry, requires some or all of the anode to be made of graphite, and Chinese companies make 99% of all graphite anode materials, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.
“If you try to make graphite here in the United States, it’s always going to be more expensive than Chinese graphite. You need a technical edge or material differentiation to be competitive in the U.S. or in Europe,” Jonathan Tan, co-founder and CEO of Coreshell, told TechCrunch.
Tan thinks his company offers that. Rather than trying to beat Chinese companies, Coreshell is attempting an end run by swapping graphite for its specially coated silicon.
To get samples of material in the hands of more automakers, Coreshell has raised a $24 million in a Series A2 round, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. The round was led by Ferroglobe, which is also Coreshell’s silicon supplier, with participation from Asymmetry Ventures, Estrada Ventures, Foothill Ventures, Helios Climate Ventures, Lane Ventures, Translink Investment, Trousdale Ventures, and Zeon Ventures.
Silicon anodes have been eyed for years as a replacement for graphite. They hold about ten times more electrons than graphite anodes, meaning each cell needs less materials. But silicon is notoriously brittle in batteries.
Startups like Sila and Group14 have found ways to make silicon anode materials that don’t crumble, and they’re working on mass producing them now. But the type of silicon they require is expensive to produce, which so far has limited their appeal to luxury automakers like Mercedes and Porsche.
Coreshell says it can use much cheaper metallurgical grade silicon, which Ferroglobe said it can supply entirely from its U.S. operations. By coating small beads of silicon with its proprietary material, Coreshell has found a way to stabilize it so it doesn’t degrade over the thousand-plus charge-discharge cycles a typical EV is expected to endure.
The startup made its first 60 amp-hour sample batteries for automakers in December, and it has a four megawatt-hour production line up and running to supply demand for testing. Coreshell hopes to sign agreements with major automakers in the next year, Tan said.
By using metallurgical grade silicon, Coreshell says it can undercut Chinese graphite on cost while also providing better performance. For example, it says by pairing its silicon anode with a lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) cathode, it can offer the same performance and range at a lower cost than today’s higher-performance cells made of graphite anodes and nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) cathodes. And if an automaker wants higher performance and range, it can use Coreshell’s silicon anode with and NMC cathode, too.
“It just lifts all the ranges of the vehicles up,” Tan said, but he added that “most Americans are never going to realize the benefits of a 500-mile car. That’s great for the luxury end, but the mass market needs a 300-mile car that’s just way cheaper than what it is right now, and it needs to be profitable for the industry. That’s really where our target is.”
To help automakers sell EVs at a profit, Tan said a superior alternative to Chinese graphite is key.
“Where we are now is the Chinese making cheap Chinese product. They’re flooding the market with it,” he said. “What do you really need to be competitive? Some inherent technical advantage, some inherent material advantage that gives you a lighter weight, lower cost battery.”