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Samsung Venture, Hyundai Investing in Battery Producer

Solid Power is positioning its technology as a competitor to the lithium-ion batteries.

Samsung Venture, Hyundai Investing in Battery Producer
A used lithium-ion electric vehicle battery (Photographer: Akio Kon/Bloomberg)

(Bloomberg) -- Solid Power Inc., a Colorado-based maker of solid-state battery cells for cars and aircraft, arranged $20 million in financing to complete a manufacturing facility.

Investors in the Series A funding round include Sanoh Industrial Co., Samsung Venture Investment Corp. and the venture capital units of Hyundai Motor Co. and Solvay SA, according to a statement Monday. It comes about nine months after Solid Power announced a deal with BMW AG to develop solid-state batteries for electric vehicles.

Solid Power is positioning its technology as a competitor to the lithium-ion batteries that have dominated the energy-storage industry. Advocates say alternative battery technologies may be safer and can pack more energy -- key for electric-vehicle range -- than lithium ion, but suppliers have struggled to transition from small-scale demonstrations to high-volume production.

Solid Power expects to complete construction this year and it will be fully operational in 2019. The site will be able to produce batteries with about 10 megawatt-hours of capacity a year. That’s big enough for potential customers to validate the company’s technology, according to Doug Campbell, Solid Power’s chief executive officer.

“It’s certainly well beyond lab state, which is historically where solid-state has been,” he said in an interview.

To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Eckhouse in New York at beckhouse@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Ryan at jryan173@bloomberg.net, Will Wade, Joe Carroll

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