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Your batteries are about to change

2021-09-11T10:13:51.409Z


A more efficient type of battery could find its way into smart glasses, cars, and even airplanes. Cade metz 09/10/2021 11:56 Clarín.com The New York Times International Weekly Updated 09/10/2021 11:56 ALAMEDA, California - The new Whoop fitness tracker fits on the wrist like any other health monitoring device or smartwatch. But you can also buy a sports bra or leggings equipped with this tiny device, which can be a small electronic fragment sewn into the fabric of clothing. Hiding a fitne


Cade metz

09/10/2021 11:56

  • Clarín.com

  • The New York Times International Weekly

Updated 09/10/2021 11:56

ALAMEDA, California - The new

Whoop

fitness

tracker

fits on the wrist like any other health monitoring device or smartwatch.

But you can also buy a sports bra or leggings equipped with this tiny device, which can be a small electronic fragment sewn into the fabric of clothing.

Hiding a fitness tracker in such a slim presentation was no small feat, said John Capodilupo, Whoop's chief technology officer.

Gene Berdichevsky, CEO and co-founder of Sila, in Alameda, California.

Photo Ulises Ortega / The New York Times.

It required a completely new type of battery.

The battery, built by a California startup called

Sila

, provided the tiny monitor with

more power

than older batteries and the same charge duration.

And while that might not sound like a big deal, Sila's battery is part of a wave of new battery technologies that could lead to novel designs in consumer electronics and help accelerate the

electrification of cars and airplanes.

Sila, which substitutes silicon for graphite and packs more ionized atoms into a smaller space.

Photo Ulises Ortega / The New York Times.

It could even be useful for storing electricity in power grids, contributing to efforts to reduce dependence on fossil fuels.

New types of batteries may not dazzle consumers in the same way as new devices or applications, but like tiny transistors, they are at the center of technological advancement.

If the batteries don't get much better, neither do the devices they power.

A fitness tracker that uses a smaller and more powerful battery than others.

Whoop photo via The New York Times.

Companies like

Enovix, QuantumScape, Solid Power, and Sila

have been developing these batteries for more than a decade with some hoping to make the leap to

mass production

around 2025.

Sila CEO and co-founder Gene Berdichevsky was one of the first Tesla employees to oversee battery technology when the company built its first electric car.

Introduced in 2008, the

Tesla Roadster

used a battery designed with lithium-ion technology, the same battery technology that powers laptops, smartphones, and other consumer devices.

The popularity of Tesla, coupled with the rapid growth of the consumer electronics market, sparked a new wave of battery-making companies.

Berdichevsky left Tesla in 2008 to work on what eventually became Sulla.

Another entrepreneur, Jagdeep Singh, founded QuantumScape after purchasing one of the first Tesla Roadsters.

They both saw how lithium-ion batteries could change the automotive market.

They saw the possibility of an even greater opportunity if they could build a more powerful type of battery.

"The ion batteries had gotten good enough, but they came to a standstill," Berdichevsky said.

"We wanted to take the technology to the

next level."

Around the same time, Congress created the Advanced Research Projects-Energy Agency (ARPA-E) to promote research and development of new energy technologies.

The agency supported the new battery manufacturing companies with financing and other types of support.

A decade later, those efforts are beginning to pay off.

After raising more than

$ 925 million

in funding, Sila employed about 250 people at his small factory and research center in Alameda, the small island town west of Oakland.

When he founded the company in 2011 together with two other entrepreneurs, Berdichevsky figured it would take about five years to get a battery to market.

It took them 10.

The Whoop 4.0 physical activity monitor, which went on sale Wednesday, September 8 with a monthly subscription fee of between $ 18 and $ 30, is a

first sign

of how Sila's technology can work in the mass market.

The battery provides 17 percent higher power density than the battery used by the previous model of Whoop's fitness tracker.

That means the device can be a third smaller, offer a new variety of body sensors, and maintain the same charge duration.

Sila and Whoop, a Boston company founded by a former

Harvard University

athlete

(named after a recurring phrase he used to say before big games), claimed to have the manufacturing capacity needed to install the new battery in the millions of dollars. devices for years to come.

The fitness tracker, a device with a small niche, might seem like a timid first step, but it is an indicator of Sila's expectations of bringing the technology to electric cars and other markets.

"If these things make it into a smartphone or some other consumer device, it will be a sign of real progress," said Venkat Viswanathan, associate professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Carnegie Mellon University, who specializes in technology technology. batteries.

"That is not easy".

Sila is not exactly a battery manufacturing company.

The company sells a new material, a silicon powder that can significantly increase the performance of batteries, and plans to produce them using many of the same factories and other infrastructure that develop lithium-ion batteries.

Today's batteries are based on the back and forth movement of lithium atoms.

This generates energy because each atom is in a state of positive charge, which means that it is missing a single electron.

In that state, these lithium atoms are said to be ionized.

That is the reason why they are called lithium

ion batteries

.

When you connect an electric car to a charging station, lithium ion atoms collect on one side of the battery called the anode.

When you start the car and drive down the road, the battery provides electrical power as the atoms move to the other side, the cathode.

This is made possible by the chemical composition of the anode, cathode, and surrounding parts of the battery.

Normally, the anode is made of graphite.

To improve battery performance, Sila replaces graphite with silicon, which can store more lithium atoms in a smaller space.

That translates into

more efficient batteries.

Today, the company produces this silicon powder at its small plant in Alameda.

It then sells the powder to a battery manufacturer - Sila declined to identify the other company - which inserts the material into its existing process and produces the new battery for the Whoop fitness tracker.

"We are only improving the factories that are used today," Berdichevsky said.

Although according to Berdichevsky this strategy gave Sila a significant advantage over his many competitors, Viswanathan, the Carnegie Mellon professor, said other companies were taking different paths to refine the way lithium-ion batteries are built.

Companies like Sila and QuantumScape have partnerships with various automakers and expect their batteries to hit cars by the middle of this decade.

The goal is for its technologies to significantly reduce the cost of electric cars and extend their driving range.

In an image provided by Whoop, a fitness tracker that uses a smaller, more powerful battery than other types.

(Whoop via The New York Times)

Gene Berdichevsky, CEO and Co-Founder of Sila, in Alameda, California, on September 1, 2021. (Ulysses Ortega / The New York Times)

c.2021 The New York Times Company

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Source: clarin

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