Battery technology company Coreshell has announced the electric vehicle (EV) industry’s first commercial-scale 60-Ah battery cells, made using an anode made from 100% domestically sourced metallurgical silicon (MG-Si).
The company’s MG-Si battery cells offer a tenfold increase in specific capacity compared to graphite anodes, cutting material costs by up to 50%. The new technology delivers a 29% reduction in carbon emissions compared to typical LFP/graphite batteries.
This advancement marks a key milestone in the company’s effort to revolutionize batteries with more efficient, sustainable materials. It’s particularly significant as China currently controls nearly 93% of the global graphite supply chain.
The heavy reliance on Chinese graphite is a major vulnerability for the EV industry because China holds a near monopoly on graphite processing, giving them significant control over the supply and price of this critical material. Coreshell’s ability to replace graphite entirely with domestically sourced metallurgical silicon offers a powerful advantage in reducing supply chain risks, sustainability, and costs.
With its 60-Ah battery cells ready for commercialization, Coreshell is starting production at its newly-built 4-MWh manufacturing facility in San Leandro, California, while simultaneously moving forward with a 100-MWh facility currently in site selection and design phase. In 2025, Coreshell will deliver A-samples of its 60-Ah battery cells to global automakers.
Why metallurgical silicon?
Coreshell’s innovative use of domestically sourced metallurgical silicon (MG-Si) and lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cathodes addresses two critical challenges in the EV industry: cost and scalability. Unlike synthetic silicon, which is engineered to mitigate swelling but costs up to 20 times more than graphite, Coreshell starts with unrefined metallurgical silicon, offering a more practical and cost-effective solution.
Metallurgical silicon is half the cost of graphite on a per-kilogram basis, while delivering ten times the specific capacity of graphite anodes. This results in a lower-cost, higher-performing battery that supports the mass-market adoption of electric vehicles. Traditional lithium-ion batteries rely on graphite anodes, which have significant cost and performance limitations. In contrast, silicon anodes can store significantly more energy, enhancing EV range and performance.
Silicon’s traditional challenges—swelling and degradation over time — have been mitigated by Coreshell’s layer-by-layer solution-phase coating technique. This process enables the use of larger silicon microparticles, reducing swelling and allowing the integration of cost-effective MG-Si into EV batteries. The result is a scalable, affordable, and high-performance battery solution for the next generation of electric vehicles.
Battery cell features
- Fully domestically sourced metallurgical silicon: Unlike synthetic silicon alternatives, Coreshell’s metallurgical silicon is derived from abundant, low-cost domestic resources, reducing supply chain risks and costs.
- Higher capacity, lower cost: Coreshell’s battery cells achieve 10x the specific capacity of graphite anodes, while reducing material costs by up to 50%.
- Scalability and standardization: The cells are produced using widely adopted infrastructure and equipment from leading manufacturers, allowing for efficient scaling and the potential for broad industry adoption.
- Improved carbon footprint: Coreshell’s technology achieves a 29% reduction in carbon emissions compared to traditional graphite-anode LFP cells, and a 16 percent reduction compared to NMC/graphite cells, according to life cycle assessments (LCA) conducted by Benchmark.
Filed Under: Batteries, Technology News