Taisan raises £1.3m for solid state sodium battery
UK startup TaiSan has raised £1.3m for quasi-solid state sodium battery technology for electric vehicles.
TaiSan is targeting a 20 percent cost saving for its solid state sodium battery that is a drop-in solution at existing lithium-ion production facilities. The company, set up by a former Jaguar LandRover engineer, has already signed MOUs with number of automotive OEMs.
The pre-seed round was led by EIT InnoEnergy and TSP Ventures and followed by Heartfelt VC and Exergon, Europe’s leading strategic e-mobility funds.Heartfelt VC is also linked to Porsche.
Over the last two years, TaiSan has received close to a total of £500,000 in funding by multiple UK Government and Research organisations, including the Department for Transport (DfT), The Faraday Institution, Innovate UK, Advanced Propulsion Centre, Royal Academy of Engineering and Catapult Connected Places.
Adoption of sodium-ion chemistry is widely regarded as one of the next major BEV shifts, offering significant cost, sustainability, and safety benefits compared to lithium ion batteries. The global market expected to grow rapidly and be worth £1 billion by 2028 reaching a capacity of 186GWh/year in 2030.
Tiamat in France has seen backing by car maker Stellantis for sodium battery technology, while Acculon in Sweden and Natron in the US have started production lines.
TaiSan has developed its own proprietary electrolyte and anode materials for a quasi solid state sodium cell. The first generation has comparable volumetric and gravimetric battery energy density to an automotive lithium ion but can be 20% cheaper in mass production and also supports fast charging.
Its advanced technology offers industry-standard ionic conductivity to enable fast-charging, reduction of dendrite growth that usually limits battery cycle life, high capacity anode, and with no leakage possible, no risk of fire. The IP is designed as a ‘drop-in’ solution to existing lithium-ion battery manufacturing facilities to scale faster with the lower barrier to the market.
TaiSan has already signed a number of MOUs with automotive manufacturers from seven different countries. The latest funding will help the company to progress with agreed customers milestones and advance the development of the company’s innovative electrolyte and anode materials.
“Our quasi-solid-state sodium battery offers significant cost, sustainability, and safety benefits for the BEV industry,” said Founder and CEO of TaiSan, Sanzhar Taizhan. “TaiSan’s novel electrolyte and anode innovations will bring this chemistry to the next level – batteries becoming smaller, lighter, with best-in-class energy density, and major cost savings too. Our new investment will allow us to ramp-up development and we will be announcing some game-changing results in the very near future.”
”For several years we have been following and investing in sodium-ion technology, as we believe this to be one of the most promising chemistries for batteries. Until now, we have mainly seen this as an option for stationary storage applications,” said CEO of EIT InnoEnergy Scandinavia, Lowina Lundström. “However, when we discovered TaiSan we immediately saw the potential for sodium-ion to move into new more demanding applications such as traction batteries or high-power batteries. We are very excited to kick off the collaboration with the team at TaiSan”
If you enjoyed this article, you will like the following ones: don't miss them by subscribing to :
