Sila Technologies, the battery materials company that has partnered with BMW and Daimler, landed $45 million in new funding and hired two high-profile executives, including Kurt Kelty, who led the battery cell team at Tesla for more than a decade. Kelty, who was on Sila Nano’s advisory board, has been appointed vice president of automotive, […]
Tesla CEO Elon Musk forecast that the company’s energy business will eventually be the same size as — or even bigger than — its automotive sector, the latest sign that the company plans to put more time and resources to scaling up its solar and storage products. “It could be bigger, but it will certainly be of […]
Arch Rao, the former head of product at Tesla who was behind the company’s Powerwall home energy storage is system, is back with a new company pitching energy management and efficiency for homes. Span is looking to upgrade the electrical fuse box for homes with a digital system that integrates into the existing circuit breaker […]
Walmart came out swinging earlier this week in a lawsuit that accused Tesla of breach of contract and gross negligence over problems with rooftop solar panel systems installed at the retail giant’s stores. Now, just days later, the lawsuit has been placed on hold while the two companies try to reach an agreement that would […]
As the technologies that were once considered science fiction become the purview of science, the venture capital firms that were once investing at the industry’s fringes are now finding themselves at the heart of the technology industry. Investing in the commercialization of technologies like genetic engineering, quantum computing, digital avatars, augmented reality, new human-computer interfaces, […]
For a long, long time, renewable energy proponents have considered advancements in battery technology to be the Holy Grail of the industry. Advancements in energy storage has been among the hardest to achieve economically, thanks to the incredibly tricky chemistry that’s involved in storing power. Now, one company that’s launching from Y Combinator believes it […]
Tesla has launched a new utility-scale energy storage product called Megapack modeled after the giant battery system it deployed in South Australia as the company seeks to provide an alternative to natural gas “peaker” power plants. Megapack is the third and largest energy storage system offered by Tesla. The company also sells the residential Powerwall […]
Even as its solar business declined in step with its overall earnings, Tesla is bullish on the prospects for the energy side of its business over the course of the year. The energy business is an unheralded part of Tesla — overshadowed by its headline-grabbing (and much larger) auto exploits — that chief executive Elon […]
In the nine years since private equity and venture capital investments into sustainable technologies last crossed the $6 billion threshold, the problems caused by global carbon emissions have only intensified. Now, as the world confronts the reality that there’s not much time left to reverse course on carbon emissions and the impact they will have […]
Sila Nanotechnologies and its battery materials manufacturing technology are now worth more than $1 billion. The company, which announced a $170 million funding led by Daimler and a partnership with the famed German automaker, started building out its first production lines for its battery materials last year. That first line is capable of producing the […]