Silicon could boost electric car battery range and reduce production costs

The race to build a better electric car battery is turning to silicon, with several companies working to engineer types of the material that can boost driving range and cut production costs.

About 500,000 electric vehicles (EVs) were sold globally in 2016, a figure that is expected to jump sevenfold by 2022, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

That increase is forecast to be helped by government mandates to cut tailpipe emissions by banning gasoline and diesel-powered cars. But many drivers have so far been put off by the high cost of EVs and worries about driving range, which so far is limited to a few hundred miles (kilometers) before needing a charge.

But silicon could, if adopted en masse for EV batteries, help boost energy storage.

One such company, California-based Sila Nanotechnologies, aims to have its technology in over a million electric vehicle (EVs) batteries by the middle of the next decade, Chief Executive Gene Berdichevsky said in an interview.

Silicon has a higher energy density than the graphite traditionally used as part of battery anodes. Batteries are comprised of an anode and cathode, the negative and positive parts, respectively, between which electrical current flows.

Sila, which started at a laboratory at the Georgia Institute of Technology, says it has developed technology that can replace graphite entirely, helping to boost capacity and range.

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