Porsche is investing $100M in lithium-silicon batteries

Porsche has announced that it joined Series C funding round for Group14 Technologies, Washington based company specializing in lithium-silicon batteries. The total funding round closed at $400M with Porsche putting down $100M with a plan to become a global leader in the market for the most powerful battery cells. The funds were raised to help the company with the construction of another factory to produce battery materials in the US.

The idea behind the Group14 invention is replacing the anode material with either silicon or silicon and graphite blend. This in turn increases the battery density by as much as 30 percent affording an electric vehicle much greater range. At the same time the new material increases charging speed significantly. This isn’t a far-fetched laboratory based experiment either - the Group14 Technologies has been funded back in 2015 and has been developing the product since with the current iteration being commercially ready for direct replacement of current anode materials. This puts Porsche tantalisingly close to the holy grail of batteries with 1000Wh/l energy density - all it needs is the new factory and hence the latest funding round.

We said that before - the pace of EV technology is relentless, a few years back we were worrying about range and life of batteries with the majority of those worries now not only addressed but fading into history. This latest advancement is putting electric vehicle batteries step closer to energy density by volume of fossil fuels, sure the road is still long and most likely bumpy but we are getting closer. Energy density is just one issue - the other very important part is the price and this is where the race is getting really close.

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