By Hyunjoo Jin

SAN FRANCISCO – An ex-Tesla (NASDAQ:), engineer founded a battery startup on Tuesday. He plans to start a U.S.-based mass-production of next-generation materials. The goal is to reduce cost, increase driving ranges, and decrease industry dependency on China.

Sila Nanotechnologies is planning to invest in the hundreds of millions of dollar in a new plant located in Washington State, Gene Berdichevsky (Sila CEO) told Reuters. The plant will be open by 2024.

He stated that Tesla had been founded in 2003 and the prices of the batteries for electric vehicles have not fallen as fast as expected. Therefore, new materials might be available to lower their cost.

Automobile manufacturer Daimler AG (ETR 🙂 owns a minority stake in Sila unlisted, which also works with BMW. Sila has raised $590 million more last year to increase its valuation by an estimated $3.3B.

Berdichevsky stated that Sila will use the new Moses Lake plant to produce silicon-based anodes materials. These can store 20% more energy compared with anodes made from graphite which is 70% imported from China.

Graphite appears on the U.S. crucial minerals list, while silicon does not. The Biden administration aims at reducing dependence on China for the battery supply chain.

His new facility will be able to produce enough silicon-based anodes to supply 10 gigawatts of electricity for 100,000 electric vehicle batteries. He also stated that the goal is to grow its capacity to support 2 million electric vehicles per year.

Sila manages a production line at their headquarters in Alameda. This facility can manufacture battery materials for around 1,000 cars per annum, but it’s primarily producing materials used in the making of fitness watches.

Berdichevsky claimed that Sila was trying solve the problem of scaling production up to meet the demand of carmakers.

Tesla CEO Elon Tesla announced plans to use silicon anodes for its new batteries in the Battery Day event in 2020. However, it is unclear if this is using the groundbreaking technology. Tesla didn’t immediately respond to our request for comment.