The New York Times has a look at efforts to build a next generation electric battery for automotive use:
Another prominent name is SES AI, founded in 2012 based on technology developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. SES has backing from General Motors, Hyundai, Honda, the Chinese automakers Geely and SAIC, and the South Korean battery maker SK Innovation. In March, SES, based in Woburn, Mass., opened a factory in Shanghai that is producing prototype cells. The company plans to begin supplying automakers in large volumes in 2025.
SES shares have also plunged, but Qichao Hu, the chief executive and a co-founder, said he wasn't worried. "That's a good thing," he said. "When the market is bad, only the good ones will survive. It will help the industry reset."
SES and other battery companies say they have solved the fundamental scientific hurdles required to make cells that will be safer, cheaper and more powerful. Now it's a question of figuring out how to churn them out by the millions.
Interesting decision to put the factory in Shanghai rather than in the United States.
Hu's shareholder letter from March explained "By combining the R&D breakthroughs at our SES Boston HQ with the supply chain and manufacturing efficiency of Shanghai Giga and SES Korea, we are confident in our ability to deliver." The company's initial prospectus from this year disclosed, "The Chinese government, including at both the national and local levels, has exercised and continues to exercise substantial control over virtually every sector of the Chinese economy via regulation and state ownership" and also, "Article VII of the National Intelligence Law of China requires every commercial entity in China, by simple order of the Chinese government, to act as an agent of the government by committing espionage, technology theft, or whatever else the government deems to be in the national interest of China. If the Chinese government were to require the appropriation of certain of our intellectual property in the national interest, this could lead to material adverse effects on our operations and competitive positions."