The Trump administration’s trade policies have sent global businesses into a tailspin.
But it just might be an opportune time to be a US-based manufacturing company promising to reduce reliance on China for a key battery material.
That’s how Gene Berdichevsky, co-founder and CEO of battery materials startup Sila, views the current moment, as Sila prepares to launch production at a new plant in Moses Lake, Washington.
“The tariff policies can actually be quite beneficial for us,” Berdichevsky told Tech Brew. “We’re starting to see real price signals for manufacturing battery supply chain in America.”
Subbing in: Although the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act established incentives to support domestic clean-energy projects, Berdichevsky said that, in his view, the legislation didn’t go far enough to incentivize localizing all parts of the battery supply chain. Even now, under one of the most protectionist trade regimes in decades, he believes federal policymakers could go further in their efforts to promote US production of battery raw materials.
“The Biden [Section] 301 tariffs exempted graphite, and the reciprocal tariffs exempt natural graphite but not synthetic,” Berdichevsky said. “And the reason is that we are so overly dependent on China for battery anode materials that we can’t even bring ourselves to put any kind of barrier on it.”
Sila’s business is premised on replacing graphite—a key battery input for which the US is heavily reliant on China—with silicon in battery anodes. Such tech advancements could improve battery performance, bring down battery costs, and help localize supply chains.
“Our material can substitute 100% of the graphite. We’ve demonstrated that commercially,” Berdichevsky said. “So we think there’s an opportunity to drive even more onshoring of battery supply chains.
“The dependence on China, as you see critical minerals being restricted and rare earth being restricted, I think is becoming very obvious to everybody,” he added. “And so we’re saying, ‘Look, we are the substitute.’”
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Step forward: Sila, based in Alameda, California, was founded in 2011. The company broke ground on the Moses Lake facility in late 2023.
The company claims that its silicon-based anode can deliver up to 25% higher energy density compared to graphite cells on the market today, and that eventually it could offer a 40% improvement and enable battery recharge times of under 10 minutes.
Sila recently announced that it’s entering the commissioning phase for the facility, ahead of starting material production later this year.
The plant will produce Titan Silicon, Sila’s silicon anode technology, “at the capacity needed to deliver for multiple automotive customers, as well as a growing pipeline of consumer electronics and technology products,” per a news release. Sila’s automotive customers include Mercedes-Benz and battery manufacturer Panasonic Energy.
Getting the Moses Lake factory up and running represents a leap forward for Sila, as it has about 50 times the capacity of the company’s production facility at Sila’s headquarters. Berdichevsky noted that it’s still relatively small in terms of automotive scale—but Sila is already eyeing an expansion.
Meanwhile, he’s undaunted by some of the headwinds facing the US EV market, including a slowdown in demand and a withdrawal of federal support for electrification.
“Even in the doldrums of the sentiment, we’re seeing growth. We’re seeing carmakers continue to bring much better models to consumers,” Berdichevsky said. “And so the electrification trend will continue, no matter what the politics of EVs are, in my view. And I think it’s actually healthiest when it’s adopted by consumers because it’s a better product, not because it’s the super-subsidized product or because it’s a mandated product.”