Lighter, turbocharged Lithium

Lithium ion is a battery technology with a huge following, and for good reasons.  Lithium is long lasting, it has great recharge potential and it's not prohibitively expensive.

There is a lot of capital tied up in lithium ion and it's unlikely that any rival technology is ready to knock it off its perch, at least not just yet.

Sila is focused on next generation lithium ion for electric vehicles

A promising looking start-up linked to the next generation Lithium is Sila Nanotechnologies.  Founded at recently as 2011, Sila is a team of Californian entrepreneurs who have partners with the Georgia Institute of Technology. (Yet another battery tech firm owing much of its chemistry and physics know-how to a research focused university).

Information around the net on Sila is currently quite minimal but we do know that they are working to produce lighter, smaller and more powerful lithium ion batteries, specifically targeted at the electric vehicle market.  Their battery may have double the capacity of the current generation of lithium ion.

Sila is backed by a couple of venture capital companies from Silicon Valley, plus they have secured a $1.73 million grant from the US Department of Energy.

I wonder if start-ups like this manage to secure venture capital before they get federal grants or whether the venture capitalists are drawn to companies that have some level of recognition from these research arms of the US government.

Sila sounds like one to watch.  There's great interest in hybrid vehicles now so any technology that could potentially make them lighter and with a longer range on their electric cells, is certainly worth keeping an eye on.

Sila Nanotechnologies

Starts ups with DoE funding