Stellantis stated it has invested in Lyten, a Silicon Valley startup that’s creating lithium-sulfur EV batteries made with three-dimensional graphene that promise lowered weight, greater vitality density and a less complicated invoice of supplies.
The 2 corporations introduced the tie-up on Thursday. They might not disclose the dimensions of the funding, different to say that Stellantis Ventures, the group’s tech-focused enterprise capital fund, wouldhave a “important” function in Lyten’s present funding spherical.
Lyten’s lithium-sulfur batteries shall be prepared for manufacturing by the top of the last decade, Oliver Gross, senior fellow vitality storage and electrification at Stellantis, stated.
“We wished to discover a expertise that shall be nicely deployable throughout the Dare Ahead 2030 targets,” Gross stated of Stellantis’ strategic plan, which envisages gross sales of greater than 5 million EVs globally by that point, together with one hundred pc of European gross sales and 50 p.c within the U.S.
Dan Cook dinner, the CEO and co-founder of Lyten, stated the batteries may have as much as twice the vitality density of present batteries, and that uncooked materials sourcing and manufacturing might be localized in North America and Europe. The primary batteries from a pilot plant in San Jose, Calif., are anticipated to bear testing by the top of this 12 months, Lyten stated.
Cook dinner described three-dimensional graphene as a “supermaterial,” in a position to be tuned to all kinds of makes use of, together with light-weight physique and structural parts, in addition to sensors.
Stellantis and Lyten executives stated the principle benefit for lithium-sulfur batteries is their weight financial savings, due to greater vitality density, which suggests smaller batteries and fewer supplies. They might co-exist with different battery chemistries relying on software, Stellantis says.
The startup says that its batteries don’t use nickel, cobalt or manganese and can have a carbon footprint that’s 60 p.c smaller than conventional lithium-ion batteries.
Graphene historically has been a single-cell two-dimensional sheet of carbon atoms, stated Keith Norman, Lyten’s chief sustainability officer, and is tough to fabricate cost-effectively and doesn’t mix nicely with different supplies as a result of it isn’t extremely reactive. It’s additionally not very “tunable,” he stated, including that corporations want to switch their very own merchandise to work with it.
Three-dimensional graphene, which is twisted and crumpled into completely different shapes, solves a few of these issues, Norman stated. “The reactive floor space is elevated by orders of magnitude,” he stated, which helps it bond with different supplies. “It’s extremely tunable for power, conductivity, weight discount and different traits.”