Stellantis said it has invested in Lyten, a Silicon Valley startup that is developing lithium-sulfur EV batteries made with three-dimensional graphene that promise reduced weight, higher energy density and a simpler bill of materials.
The two companies announced the tie-up on Thursday. They would not disclose the size of the investment, other to say that Stellantis Ventures, the group’s tech-focused venture capital fund, wouldhave a “significant” role in Lyten’s current funding round.
Lyten’s lithium-sulfur batteries will be ready for production by the end of the decade, Oliver Gross, senior fellow energy storage and electrification at Stellantis, said.
“We wanted to find a technology that will be well deployable within the Dare Forward 2030 goals,” Gross said of Stellantis’ strategic plan, which envisages sales of more than 5 million EVs globally by that time, including 100 percent of European sales and 50 percent in the U.S.
Dan Cook, the CEO and co-founder of Lyten, said the batteries could have up to twice the energy density of current batteries, and that raw material sourcing and production could be localized in North America and Europe. The first batteries from a pilot plant in San Jose, Calif., are expected to undergo testing by the end of this year, Lyten said.
Cook described three-dimensional graphene as a “supermaterial,” able to be tuned to a wide variety of uses, including lightweight body and structural components, as well as sensors.
Stellantis and Lyten executives said the main advantage for lithium-sulfur batteries is their weight savings, because of higher energy density, which means smaller batteries and less materials. They could co-exist with other battery chemistries depending on application, Stellantis says.
The startup says that its batteries do not use nickel, cobalt or manganese and will have a carbon footprint that is 60 percent smaller than traditional lithium-ion batteries.
Graphene traditionally has been a single-cell two-dimensional sheet of carbon atoms, said Keith Norman, Lyten’s chief sustainability officer, and is difficult to manufacture cost-effectively and does not combine well with other materials because it is not highly reactive. It’s also not very “tunable,” he said, adding that companies need to modify their own products to work with it.
Three-dimensional graphene, which is twisted and crumpled into different shapes, solves some of those problems, Norman said. “The reactive surface area is increased by orders of magnitude,” he said, which helps it bond with other materials. “It’s highly tunable for strength, conductivity, weight reduction and other characteristics.”