TaiSan to accelerate development of quasi-solid-state sodium batteries

TaiSan, the UK company pioneering quasi-solid state sodium batteries for the global automotive industry, announced the raise of £1.3 million, investment that will accelerate development of TaiSan’s game-changing battery electric vehicle (BEV) technology.

Led by EIT InnoEnergy and TSP Ventures, and followed by Heartfelt VC and Exergon, TaiSan’spre-seed round is backed by Europe’s leading strategic e-mobility funds. Co-funded by the European Union, EIT InnoEnergy has investment links to both leading automotive OEMs and gigafactories. Heartfelt VC is also linked to a leading automotive OEM.

Adoption of sodium-ion chemistry is widely regarded as one of the next major BEV shifts. The game-changing technology offers significant cost, sustainability, and safety benefits vs lithium-ion, with the global market expected to rapidly grow to a value of £1 billion by 2028, reaching a capacity of 186GWh/year in 2030.

Launched in 2022 with the objective of realising an industry-disrupting increase in the energy density of sodium batteries for BEVs, TaiSan has developed its own proprietary, innovative polymer electrolyte featuring an innovative anode material, using sustainable and abundant, environmentally friendly materials across the board. This has resulted in a cell with comparable volumetric and gravimetric energy density to an automotive lithium-ion cell but with a projected 20 percent cost saving over the most common chemistry for BEV batteries.

TaiSan technology is based on sustainable and abundant, environmentally friendly materials across the board (i.e., no lithium, nickel, cobalt and copper metals are used).

TaiSan’s ultra-advanced technology offers industry-standard ionic conductivity to enable fast-charging, and high mechanical strength to withstand dendrite growth and, with no leakage possible, no risk of fire. Combined with a projected 20 per cent cost saving vs lithium-ion, with comparable energy density and designed as a ‘drop-in’ solution to existing lithium-ion battery manufacturing facilities, TaiSan’s battery innovation is cost-effective and designed for mass production.

TaiSan has already signed 12 MOUs with automotive manufacturers, and its latest funding will help to advance the development of the company’s innovative electrolyte and anode materials. These patent-pending innovations are based not only on material science but also on scalable manufacturing methods.

CEO of TaiSan, Sanzhar Taizhan, commented: “On behalf of our entire team, I am delighted to announce the completion of this pre-seed fund raise and would like to thank our expert strategic investors for their vision and full support. Sodium-ion offers significant cost, sustainability and safety benefits for the BEV industry. TaiSan’s novel electrolyte and anode material innovations will bring this technology to the next level – batteries becoming smaller, lighter, with best-in-class energy density, and major cost savings too. Our new investment will enable us to ramp up development and we will be announcing some game-changing results in the very near future. Watch this space.”

Lowina Lundström, CEO, EIT InnoEnergy Scandinavia, commented: “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. 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.”

CIO of TSP Ventures, Mike Doswell, commented: “We are incredibly excited to be a part of this investment round into TaiSan. We believe TaiSan’s technological breakthroughs can unlock the promise of sodium-ion by delivering cheaper, highly functional batteries with significantly lower environmental impact. We look forward to supporting Sanzhar and the team, in any way we can, to deliver on their impressive vision.”