Spencer Gore is battery powered. But, at least for now, he doesn't want his batteries to be installed in electric cars.
“There are a lot of interesting down-market segments in automotive that are underserved today that you can get into faster than, say, traction batteries in EVs,” he told TechCrunch. Consider a conventional 12 volt lead acid battery. It's now under the hood of every fossil fuel vehicle on the road. Although it was surpassed in production capacity by lithium-ion only a few years ago, it remains a huge market.
“So we're still relying on 150-year-old technology,” Gore said.
By contrast, Gore's company, Bedrock Materials, uses chemistry invented about a decade ago. Without giving details, he says it's similar to what's in most EVs today, with one big difference: It doesn't contain lithium.
Instead, Bedrock Materials is developing sodium-ion batteries, which are expected to be dramatically cheaper than lithium-ion batteries. The expected cost savings come from sodium enrichment. There is about 1,000 more sodium than lithium on Earth.
Still, challenges remain. Sodium-ion batteries cannot store as much energy as lithium-ion batteries and are priced lower than lithium-ion batteries, but the difference is not large enough to tempt hesitant automakers. Formulations that store enough energy to counter lithium ions have proven fragile, but Gore said his company's chemistry addresses that issue.
Ultimately, Gore hopes Bedrock Materials will win the EV battery contract. But he argues that it makes more sense to bring products like starter batteries for fossil-fuel-powered cars and trucks to more stagnant markets first. “This is classic 'disruption from the bottom': start with something cheaper, albeit honestly of lesser quality, and step up from there as the technology improves.”
To prove that sodium ion chemistry can replace lead acid in starter batteries, Bedrock Materials is manufacturing materials for third-party testing. To fund this effort, 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 company recently opened a research and development facility in Chicago, a city that hasn't had many battery-related startups in the past. But Gore, who previously worked for Tesla and battery materials startup Enovix, moved his company to Illinois in part because his cost of living is significantly lower than in Silicon Valley.
At Enovix, we've noticed a trend among new hires that stands out to us. “Basically, it was a bimodal staffing situation: a new employee who was fine with having five roommates with him, and a vice president who didn't even live here. They just flew in.”1 I will stay for a week and return home,” he said.
Battery scientists, on the other hand, tend to be mid-career. They typically have a Ph.D. or postdoc, and by the time they get a job in industry, “they're 31 years old,” Gore said. “The math just doesn’t work in the Bay Area.”
It also doesn't hurt that Argonne National Laboratory is located in the suburbs of Chicago, where years of research have led to significant advances in sodium-ion batteries. Now, Gore believes it is ready to bring it to market.
Other battery manufacturers agree that sodium-ion's 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 plans to add their own sodium-ion production lines. By the end of the decade, 150 gigawatt-hours of production capacity, the bulk of China, is expected to be operational.
Gore said China's interest in sodium ions should serve as a wake-up call to other producers. “We have seen Chinese battery manufacturers move very quickly towards commercializing sodium-ion technology, and we have also seen how non-Chinese battery manufacturers are far behind when it comes to lithium iron phosphate. “The obvious question is, does the same thing happen with sodium ions?'' he said. He said companies such as Panasonic and LG had learned their lessons. “They don't want to be left in the dust again.”