Insider Q&A: Company's chemistry could cut EV battery costs

DETROIT (AP) — A small company called Sila has contracts with most major automakers to research or provide a promising new battery chemistry that can let electric vehicles travel farther with a smaller battery.

The Alameda, California, company began more than a decade ago as a startup out of Georgia Tech, and co-founder and CEO Gene Berdichevsky says its chemistry can store more energy than current lithium-ion batteries.

In current batteries, lithium ions move from anode to cathode, generating electricity by splitting into charged ions and electrons. Graphite stores lithium atoms inside a battery until needed. Instead of graphite, Sila uses silicon, which can store more lithium.

Berdichevsky, who was an early employee at Tesla, talked with The Associated Press about the future of electric vehicles. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: What do you see as the shortcomings of today’s lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, and how can your company change that?

A: The biggest shortcoming is cost. We’ve demonstrated that incredible vehicles can be made with today’s battery technology, very long range that consumers love and want to buy. The key now is to make every vehicle equally compelling, and that means getting to lower-cost vehicles without sacrificing performance, without making the vehicle have only 100 miles, 200 miles of range. Those are pretty mediocre vehicles that people tend to not want to buy. To do that, you really need to drive down costs. The best way is to increase performance and to store more energy in fewer cells. By replacing graphite with silicon, every single battery in a vehicle can store 20% to 40% more energy. Then you can use 20% to 40% fewer cells to fill the battery pack. So the higher the performance of the chemistry, the fewer cells you need. The fewer cells you...