Lie Shi, CEO of AM Batteries and panel host, kicked off by stating that “many in the world became aware of DBE in September 2020, when Tesla announced their roadmap for dry electrode manufacturing… but the question is no longer if DBE will work, but how fast it will come and what accelerates adoption.” This set the tone for the panel, which was one of clear confidence in technical progress, balanced with realism about scaling challenges.
Bonne Eggleston shared that Tesla always anticipated DBEs challenges, while admitting that maybe they didn’t realise quite how hard it would be! Despite this, dry electrodes are now integrated into the Cybertruck and Model Y with Cybercab and Semi-Truck integration coming later this year.
A major theme was “the front end matters”. Engineering dry composite powders with the right balance of flowability and cohesion is critical. Here, different approaches emerged. Where Anaphite’s CTO, Samuel Burrow, “developed the hammer before the nail”, creating a process to composite metal oxides, high surface carbons, and polymeric materials before applying this to DBEs, AM Batteries developed the nail first, setting out to tackle energy-intensive, inefficient wet process electrode manufacturing head-on and developing a process to achieve this.
