The Information: After Years Looking For a Market, Lithium Metal Battery Startups Find One in Ukraine
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By Steve LeVine
Many of the drone startups competing for expected massive Pentagon contracts are using Western-made next-generation batteries that power the aircraft further and charge faster. And over the last six months, Ukraine has also begun to use such exotic battery chemistries to power interceptor drones that require quick maneuvers to bring down Russian attack drones.
The increasing turn to next-gen batteries on the battlefield is a sign that the exotic chemistries are gaining a commercial footing after years of struggle by startups to develop them.
These chemistries deliver greater flying range and speed by replacing a battery’s conventional graphite anode with ones made of silicon blended with carbon and pure lithium metal. The materials, however, are extremely difficult to work with, hard to manufacture and expensive, challenges that have made electric vehicle makers resist deploying them.
But, in its second-quarter earnings call last week, Amprius Technologies said its silicon-based batteries will power the drones fielded by around half the 19 manufacturers competing later this month in the Pentagon’s $1.1 billion Drone Dominance program.
Under the program, the Pentagon will choose eight of those manufacturers to rapidly pump out a total of 60,000 combat drones by the end of September. Most of them will be one-way kamikaze drones that blow up a target on impact. Next year, in a new phase of the program, these and other drone makers will be eligible to compete to manufacture 250,000 more drones for the Pentagon by 2028.
“Anyone who reads the news understands that low-cost drones are playing an asymmetric role in military conflicts around the world, changing the nature of modern warfare,” Amprius CEO Tom Stepien told analysts on the earnings call.
The drone boom is an increasing lifeline for U.S. and other Western next-gen battery makers. Last month, lithium-metal battery maker Factorial Energy said it had signed its first commercial contract, a deal to supply its batteries to an unidentified U.S. drone maker. In recent months, BEILab, a South Korean maker of lithium-metal batteries, has sold its batteries to multiple makers of combat drones used in Ukraine, said Jaehee Sweeney, the company’s chief business development officer.
The use in drones reflect the first commercial deployments of rechargeable lithium-metal batteries, according to Keiran O’Regan, co-founder of About:Energy, a battery research and data firm.
The problem with lithium-metal batteries is that if you rev up the power to drive or fly fast, they will quickly degrade. But since many drones use a battery just once—to take off, fly directly into a target and then blow up—degradation is not a problem.
Lithium-metal batteries may never get cheap enough to use in mass-market EVs, O’Regan said. But drones have finally given the startups that make them their first commercial customers.
“These are one-way missions,” Sweeney told me. “They require range and speed. And they need to maneuver.”
Among the primary breakthroughs that have made the next-gen battery chemistries work for drones is the development of carbon nanotubes, tiny single-layer cylinders far thinner than a human hair.
In a surprising turn over the past few years, next-gen battery makers have found that mixing a sprinkle of carbon nanotubes into their electrodes vastly increases the lifetime of silicon and lithium-metal batteries and accelerates how fast they can charge. In other words, the nanotubes have helped make these chemistries a commercial product. In a speech last year, Jeff Dahn, a leading battery veteran and an adviser to Tesla, called the carbon nanotubes “magic” and said they “turn garbage into gold.”
“They just hold everything together in the electrode in a very reliable manner,” said Andrej Seniut, head of energy projects for OCSiAi, the dominant manufacturer of the nanotubes.
Amprius said it would earn $140 million in revenue this year, most of it from sales to drone makers, with a 25% gross margin and its first profit of $4 million before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.
Stepien, Amprius’ CEO, said the company had recently been branching out, landing contracts to power electric motorcycles made by Barcelona-based Stark Future and scooters made by an unidentified Chinese manufacturer. In the future, the company hopes to sell its batteries to makers of industrial and delivery robots. Because these batteries use carbon nanotubes, they achieve a sufficient lifetime for these vehicles.
However, drone batteries appear likely to remain Amprius’ main products. The company currently uses contract manufacturers in China and South Korea to produce its batteries, but Stepien says he’s on track to begin manufacture in the U.S. next year, which could become a requirement to sell to the Pentagon.
“The Pentagon will be making a major and growing outlay for [drones] for years to come,” he said.