Adionix develops new foil current collector General Motors’ GM Ventures provides funding to Adionix Adionix plans to build factory in the US
One startup aims to make EV batteries cheaper by focusing on an oft-overlooked battery component.
Adionics, which is backed by GM Ventures, the venture capital arm of General Motors, developed a new foil current collector, improving on a part that has “really remained unchanged for 30 years,” CEO Mosir Bitton said in a recently published interview with TechCrunch.
BMW cylindrical battery cell
Current collectors help gather ions inside a battery cell, and Adionics believes this process can be improved by creating aluminum and copper foil with tiny holes and wavy peaks and valleys. The idea of adding texture to improve current collectors is not new, but Biton argues that it has not been commercialized on a large scale.
The foil is made corrugated and porous using techniques from the semiconductor industry. Addionics uses electrochemical etching of aluminum foil for the battery’s cathodes. For copper foil, used for the anodes, the startup uses electricity to deposit copper ions in a defined configuration.
Audi battery assembly at its Brussels plant in Belgium
The result is a three-dimensional current collector that’s easier to manufacture, which Adionics claims will improve battery-level efficiency (already very high for EV batteries) and, most notably, potentially double their lifespan. Goldman Sachs said earlier this year that EV battery prices are falling by 40%, but some automakers, such as Toyota, argue that battery prices need to fall further to make EVs truly affordable.
The startup announced plans to build a $400 million U.S. factory earlier this year and said it had received letters of intent from unnamed automakers. As TechCrunch points out, sourcing battery materials from Adionix’s U.S. factory could help automakers meet federal EV tax credit requirements for domestic content.