The EV boom is accelerating. Over the last few days, General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) just announced it will boost global spending on EVs to 435 billion through 2025. The automaker will build two additional battery plants in the U.S. The company also announced it’ll invest $35 billion in a U.S. based lithium project to meet its demand. Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) even just announced its sales of electrified vehicles expanded 117 percent in June, capping off a new first-half sales record on sales of 56,570 vehicles. Along the way, the boom is also creating massive opportunity for companies such as Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA), Volkswagen (OTC:VWAGY), and EV battery materials and metal company NEO Battery Materials Ltd. (TSXV:NBM) (OTC:NBMFF).
Helping, President Biden is pushing for millions of electric vehicles. According to NBC News, “There are a number of reasons behind the administration’s push for battery-car technology. There’s the need to reduce CO2 emissions in order to meet global warming targets. There’s a desire to reduce America’s dependence upon petroleum imports, and there’s also a growing concern that China will wind up dominating the EV segment — something that raises defense, as well as economic, concerns.”
NEO’s Silicon Technology Demonstrates Performance Effectiveness on Low-Cost, Metallurgical-Grade Silicon Microparticles
NEO Battery Materials Ltd. (TSXV: NBM)(OTC: NBMFF) just announced that, in the latest test, NEO’s silicon nanocoating technology has successfully achieved to demonstrate effectiveness on low-cost, metallurgical grade silicon particles of micron-size (D50: 2.9mm), enabling a 6-minute (10 C-Rate) charge/discharge level without major capacity loss in the cell.
Following the previous successful integration of NEO’s silicon (Si) nanocoating technology in Si nanoparticles ranging from 50 nm to 100 nm, Dr. J. H. Park, Director and Chief Scientific Advisor of NEO, is pleased to announce that the additional capability to exhibit substantial performance effectiveness with metallurgical grade, micron-sized (mm) Si particles is a step-change for NEO due to the significant cost reductions from the Si microparticle range and the flexibility of applying NEO’s technology onto various Si particle sizes. On average, Si microparticles are 8 to 10 times cheaper compared to Si nanoparticles.
Cost Advantage of Metallurgical-Grade Silicon Microparticles
Despite retaining more than a 10 times higher specific capacity than graphite, Si material easily loses its energy retention and storage capacity due to high volume expansion and particle pulverization after minimal charging cycles. Nanosized Si could minimize its gradation pathway and partially solve this shorter life cycle problem, but the expensive cost of Si nanoparticles serves as a major bottleneck and issue for battery manufacturers and electric vehicle (EV) companies.
Due to more efficient process times and lean, inexpensive manufacturing environments, metallurgical-grade Si microparticles are highly cost-effective compared to Si nanoparticles, but performance issues at the microparticle level have hindered the widespread adoption.
“NEO is hence targeting on a two-track to develop and refine its technology on both Si microparticles and nanoparticles. The results shown in this test emphasize the potency of NEO’s Si nanocoating technology that can be applied to silicon with various particle sizes. Our technology’s flexibility of application, performance, and price competitiveness serve as the most crucial value propositions,” commented Spencer Huh, President and CEO of NEO.
Regarding the test results, Dr. Park also commented, "Our unique solution one-pot process integrates micron-sized silicon particles uniformly coated by a nanometer-thick magic coating layer, which substantially outperforms the rate-capability as shown below. From the data of 10 C-rate, which represents a 6-minute charge/discharge of the cells, we can confirm several minute-level ultra-fast charging/discharging without major capacity loss from our technology."
Mr. Huh added, “NEO’s Si anode will be a simple yet unique solution for the production of low-cost Si anode with high-capacity battery electrodes. The Company will be moving forward to test its micron-sized silicon anodes through third-party laboratory tests and direct transfers to companies in the battery supply chain that have signed NDAs with us.”
Other related developments from around the markets include:
Tesla Inc. released its financial results for the first quarter of 2021 by posting an update on its Investor Relations website. Please visit https://ir.tesla.com to view the update.
Ford Motor Company sales of electrified vehicles expanded 117 percent in June, capping off a new first-half sales record on sales of 56,570 vehicles. That’s a new all-time sales record driven by new products. Mustang Mach-E sales totaled 12,975 vehicles, while F-150 PowerBoost Hybrid added an additional 17,039 vehicles to the total. Escape Hybrid and Escape Plug-in Hybrid sales totaled 15,642 – up 45.9 percent over last year.
General Motors Company has agreed to form a strategic investment and commercial collaboration with Controlled Thermal Resources to secure local and low-cost lithium. This lithium will be produced through a closed-loop, direct extraction process that results in a smaller physical footprint, no production tailing and lower carbon dioxide emissions when compared to traditional processes like pit mining or evaporation ponds. Lithium is a metal crucial to GM's plans to make more affordable, higher mileage electric vehicles. The relationship between GM and CTR is expected to accelerate the adoption of lithium extraction methods that cause less impact to the environment. A significant amount of GM's future battery-grade lithium hydroxide and carbonate could come from CTR's Hell's Kitchen Lithium and Power development in the Salton Sea Geothermal Field, located in Imperial, California.
Volkswagen is participating, with a contribution of US$620 million (about €500 million), in a financing round of its Swedish battery partner Northvolt AB with a total volume of US$2.75 billion. The Group will thus maintain its stake in the company constant at about 20 percent. The funds are to be used for capacity expansion in the fields of production, recycling and research and development. Among other activities, Northvolt intends to expand the capacity of its Northvolt Ett gigafactory in Skellefteå, Northern Sweden from 40 GWh to 60 GWh per year, in order to meet higher demand from customers.
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