Green Giants – Episode 124

Raj DasGupta (02:14)

Well, the big big piece of it is if you’re just looking at it in a material science lab, you don’t see the big picture. You miss out on how batteries are used. That’s a big part of it. Sometimes you’re focused on just certain metrics like energy density.

certain things that the battery researchers focus on, which is what you see in some of the industry where they’re just focusing on maybe a solid state battery, but they miss out, does this battery need to last a long time? Is it going to be safe? How is it going to be cost competitive? So when you take this combine the science, the engineering, and most importantly, the customer, the market driven aspect, that’s where everything comes together and where you really have to have your product developed for. And I think that’s where, it’s taken us some time, but we’ve Electrovaya has hit its stride in that combination of factors.

Wes Ashworth (03:03)

Yeah, absolutely. Again, cool journey starting in that more technical sort of environment, and then learning the whole operations and business and the commercial aspect and how that all comes together to complete the whole picture. and I think that move from the lab into the commercial world also changes how you think about where technology can create real value and forces you to be selective because the large market and the right market are not always the same thing. But you were working on sort of a larger, large-scale stationary storage more than a decade ago.

And Electrovaya later chose not to chase that market aggressively. what did you see that made you step away?

Raj DasGupta (03:36)

Yeah, that’s a great point there you had on the large markets, not necessarily the right market. And that’s sort of reflected in our strategy as well. So if you just look back, you know, 15 years ago, Electrovaya was focused on electric vehicles, foremost. And we were going the right direction there. We had a partnership with Chrysler. A little while later, Chrysler partnership with Mercedes.

That said on the energy storage as well, we were one of the early players for bat you know, lithium-ion battery powered energy storage systems, which of course today are ubiquitous in a massive industry. What ended up happening in the space though was scale came behind certain players, especially large Asian, Chinese and Korean battery manufacturers.

And that scale, that almost govern, not almost, but government level push that they had behind them was a factor which really no North American battery companies could compete with. there have of course been a lot of high-profile battery companies in the US that have gone under, especially during, you know, in the in that period from 2012 to let’s say 2020.

And what we did is we pivoted to stay relevant and stay in the space. and that was by focusing on technology and technology that served specific niche niche markets that we identified, rather than just going wholeheartedly against the bulk. And the bulk, you know, to be fair, these large Asian players have enabled great things to happen, right? You know, the electric vehicles cost way less than they

Would have if they hadn’t brought that level of scale. But from our perspective, I think we’ve done a terrific job of coming out with new battery technologies that serve cutting edge markets. And these cutting edge markets are now at the cusp of scaling. And so we’re we are able now at this point in 2026, 2027, to ride that wave.

Wes Ashworth (05:32)

Yeah, absolutely. I think those pivots are so important, right? And I think at any successful business story, there are usually some of those that come along the way and you have to develop. And I think, knowing which markets not to pursue can be just as important as finding the right opportunity. so I always love just talking through that. And I think, as we look at today, most people look at falling battery prices and assume cheaper is automatically better. you’ve outlined a little different strategy there, but what does the market sort of misunderstand when it starts treating batteries like

Interchangeable boxes of kilowatt hours.

Raj DasGupta (06:02)

Yeah, that that’s what’s happened in certain segments. And batteries are lithium ion batteries themselves, it’s I often referred to it as like Baskin Robins, right? There’s so many different flavors. and of course there’s so many different applications that require batteries. So the lithium ion battery that goes in your phone has a very different requirement list than the one that goes into your low-cost electric vehicle or your high cost electric vehicle.

or your robot, forklift, or energy storage device. And so what we did is we focused on the applications where it was not driven by costs. And the cost is often a cost per kilowatt hour. End of the day, everything is cost. All decisions get based on some level of cost. But cost of life cycle, right? The so if a battery that goes into a robot or a forklift

That has to be charged three times a day, operates 24-7, operates inside buildings, and it’s very sensitive to safety and needs to be the same all the time. the if you put a commodity-driven battery which maybe conk out after two years, maybe that’s a higher price option for that type of application. So end of the day, I do think all decisions really do come down to return on investment. But the ones we focused on are return on investment over time as opposed to a capital cost, initial capital cost, which is what I’d say consumers are more focused on as opposed to industrial applications.

Wes Ashworth (07:32)

Yeah, absolutely. And with Electrovaya building much of its business and in those demanding type applications forklifts and robotics and automated vehicles that you just mentioned several there. what did those environments teach you that the maybe broader battery industry tends to underestimate?

Raj DasGupta (07:45)

Yeah, if you just read the press that covers batteries, you know, they’ll focus on things like the cost curve, you know, batteries dollar per kilowatt is coming down and where will it be next year, where will it be the year after? And that’s sort of the ride to the bottom and very low margin business, not a technology-driven space at all. And so what we’ve just focused on the value add.

Where we can add value through a technology. And it all comes down to, you know, there’s there’s a point in science and technology, of course, that development, but more importantly, putting the right pieces together to come up with a holistic solution to solve a problem, right? And I’d say that’s common in any industry, any business, and one where we’ve been fairly successful at, right? So we had a bunch of different battery technologies that we which we had and maybe on their own weren’t anything magic, but when we put them together, that really came out. And of course what we’re known for today, a lot of it when people hear Electrovaya they think of ceramic separator technologies. And of course that’s a critical ingredient. But it’s really the combination of a bunch of technologies which enables our cells to be really quite different and quite a bit higher performance than what you see.

typical lithium battery company from typical battery companies.

Wes Ashworth (09:04)

Yeah, strategy makes a lot of sense to me. and then though there are a lot of companies out there sort of chasing new battery chemistries or new markets or new markets altogether, and you know they’re burning through significant cash. I know Electrovaya has been has been profitable and cash flow positive for several years. Like, does running a disciplined profitable business change how you evaluate opportunities like you know, AI infrastructure versus a company still trying to sort of prove unit economics?

Raj DasGupta (09:29)

Yeah, I think our our take, yeah, it’s the slow and steady, and it’s not slow by any means. We’re growing reasonably quickly. But we’ve taken a more conservative tact to how we grow the business. As opposed to losing a ton of money and building assets and hoping customers come or selling products at at a introductory price. We are not do it we do not do that. We have I would say a premium battery technology premium product and it sold at a relatively high price versus typical lithium ion batteries. That has enabled us to get good margins, of course, make and break even, which is atypical in this industry. The typical players, especially early stage or small-scale battery companies, lose tons of money, and that’s not something A we want to do, nor were we in a position to do that. So I think this

I’d say conservative focus in our approach has benefited us up until now and really puts us in a position to sustain faster levels of growth in a in a better way going forward.

Wes Ashworth (10:31)

Yeah, absolutely. And as we’ve outlined here, that discipline, right, around where to compete, I think sets up the next chapter really well. so in AI and other high power applications, the opportunity is not just about simply storing more energy, it’s about delivering the right amount of power at exactly the right moment. and I think here’s a distinction at the center of your strategy, sort of dollars per kilowatt hour versus dollars per kilowatt. why can a battery that costs more to store energy still be the better economic solution?

Raj DasGupta (10:57)

Yeah, that’s a great, great question, Wes. And something I’ve heard from other people asking the, this type of question. Right? So we, just a few years ago, investors would ask us, you have this great battery technology, it’s very safe, it’s obviously getting used in all these world class applications. Why aren’t you looking at energy storage? And energy storage, over the over the last several years.

has become a huge space, huge industry, which and It’s enabled great, great things to happen like renewables are becoming more useful. You’ve seen the a penetration of solar especially gain a substantial traction and become a really a significant force in for climate change mitigation but The batteries that go to support these types of activities, their job has been, their number one job has to been to store energy and store it cheaply, right? So dollars per kilowatt hour has been the most important metric. And battery companies, especially Asian ones, done a terrific job of bringing that down. and the way they’ve done that is they focused on lithium iron phosphate as a chemistry, which is huge in China.

They focused on making the cells that the storage solutions are made of, made from really, really large. So the your typical cell phone battery might be, the size of your iPhone. and the cells that go into these energy storage applications might be the size of a large laptop, right? And they’re huge. They’re 500 ampers they’re getting bigger. They’re very good at storing energy at a low cost. What they’re not good at is a number of things. One, they’re not as safe necessarily as the technology we provide. They don’t charge and discharge rapidly like ours does. And then the cycle life isn’t anywhere close either. So the way we looked at it is hey, we don’t want to compete on dollars per kilowatt hour. We’ll never we’ll never beat the Chinese at that.

but if you look at outside of renewables if you look at data centers in particular and that’s what is topical today a data center is sort of like a large vehicle it uses a lot of think of it like a car right think of the data center as a car it and it’s going up and down a hilly road and so It’s power demand goes up as it’s climbing the hills, it comes down sharply when it comes down and it’s and it’s accelerating, decelerating all day long, and it’s running all day long. It’s like doing a 24-hour Le Mans race three hundred three hundred and sixty-five days a year. So that’s your that’s your data center. how is that powered? It’s powered through grid connections, it’s powered by on-site generators and turbines, everyone’s throwing everything at these things, right? and the batteries are being used to stabilize the power right so when because the generators can’t ramp up and ramp down quickly they need backup and so they’re putting these energy storage devices at these sites which have been designed for you know like I like I said earlier using these cheap

Cells which are designed to be low cost per kilowatt hour. And I looked at that and I said, hey, there is an opportunity here, right? This space it’s like a hybrid vehicle. It needs a battery which can charge rapidly, discharge rapidly, do it 24-7, many cycles a day. That battery’s gotta be can’t be parked the parking lot away from the car. It’s got to be in the car as close to the engine as possible. So you need a safe battery. And so It ticked all the boxes. Safety, cycle life, power density. And said we said, hey, we’ve got all these things in spades, let’s go after it. And so this has been our biggest development investment push to Dayton in for a product in our company history. We’re very excited. I think what’s come out is this ELVA Pulse 1500, which was what we called it, and it’s extremely power-dense energy storage system. So effectively.

It’ll it’s like your your hybrid car battery for a data center.

Wes Ashworth (14:58)

Yeah, it’s really cool and some of those distinctions and understanding that. I like I like the simple analogies as well too. and in and maybe you shared some of this there, but if there’s anything else to add in terms of, you know, everyone talks about how much electricity AI will need. it’s hard to, you know, avoid that topic today. But what are people missing about how AI actually uses electricity? Anything additional to add there?

Raj DasGupta (15:17)

Yeah, i it uses an incredible amount of energy that’s I think well understood. The pattern on how it uses it though is less well understood, right? So if you look at your your your lights, right? They’re on during the day or in the office hours and then they’re off at night and the and your home is predictable as well, right? and the Consumption of electricity in typical industrial sites is relatively constant and somewhat predictable. In a data center, the magnitude is higher, right? The amount of energy used in these buildings is for the density, for the size of those facilities is really, really high. But the consumption varies dramatically. It’ll have huge power swings.

from a in a microsecond perspective it’s very noisy. And if you look at it on a higher res larger resolution, it can have 40% power swings, right? So it is i it you know that my analogy to a car is not too dissimilar, right? Your cars, when you’re driving it on cruise control on the highway, yeah your energy consumption is pretty pretty con flat. But if you’re in the city city and you’re in stop go traffic, that’s more similar to how these buildings are being operated. And that’s where the hybridization really can have actually a meaningful benefit in both in reducing electricity or peak electricity consumption. And I don’t want to get too into the weeds here, but the way utilities price things is not, you know, they price things on your amount of energy you’ve used, but a large portion of their charges are demand charges, right? And that’s linked to the peaks, right? Because you have to build out infrastructure to the maximum power con consumed. And I think our solution really will be able to have a significant effect on reducing that.

Wes Ashworth (17:14)

Absolutely. And I think this is where this becomes much more interesting than simply forecasting total electricity demand and really starting to understand the shape of the load, you know, and that can matter just as much. But when AI creates a power problem, what time scale matters most? And is it milliseconds, seconds, minutes, tens of minutes? Like give us some perspective on that.

Raj DasGupta (17:33)

Yeah, it’s going to be evolving, right? So more and more attention is actually gonna be placed on microsecond level response times. That’s something we’re working towards on a new battery product, which is for their next generation data centers, which you might hear this term eight hundred volt being used and that’s will be more DC connected batteries, right? So it’ll be able to respond at really, really, you know, twenty microseconds and less.

now when I look at the power level power requirements overall, when you’re looking to hybridize turbines or generators and things like that, which is where our product also has a huge impact, yeah. The timescale there is are really seconds to thirty, forty minutes, right? That’s where I think our technology will come in and play a huge role.

Obviously there’s there’s this is a sector which is gonna need a broad range of solutions, and we’re not certain we’re certainly not the only one, right? So there are opportunities for sure for a longer duration energy storage. but energy storage, and this is where some folks get it a little bit misconstrued. You know, a battery doesn’t generate electrons, it just stores them, right?

ultimately more energy needs to be generated to support this these types of assets.

Wes Ashworth (18:48)

Absolutely good good context there too. And I think putting a timescale on the problem to better understand it and how it all comes together and different applications and things like that that’ll be needed. in transitioning to one of your products, I think is ElvaPulse that can deliver, an usually large amount of power relative to the energy it stores. why don’t you deliberately design the product that way and just help us to kind of simply understand that?

Raj DasGupta (19:09)

Yeah, it came down to, we looked at the current state of the art being offered in the in this space. And typical storage solutions, they’re they look like 20 foot containerized boxes. and typically these range about three megawatt hours to maybe just over five megawatt hours per per unit. and they’re typically designed to be charged and discharged.

relatively slowly, right? So two hours is really the highest level that they operate at. So when we looked at that and said, okay, the that’s the state of the art. now on a cost basis, on a cost per kilowatt hour, as I said, we won’t be able to come match these guys. But because we’ve got these ceramic separators, we’re making the cells in lower volumes, we’re gonna be making them in the US. so On a cost basis we’re not necessarily be the be directly competitive, but when you look at it on a power basis, right? So we said, hey, let’s let’s run this system much faster. And so three megawatt hours per block, we’re the lower end of the of the of the average there. But on a power basis will be seven megawatts, where the typical solutions are more like two or maybe two to three. And so that huge difference there enables us to go to customers and say, hey, you need energy storage to deal with these peaks and troughs, but our you can use half the number of batteries if you use Electrovaya’s ElvaPulse. And that’s where the compelling argument comes in.

Wes Ashworth (20:36)

Yeah, absolutely very compelling. And it’s cool to see again see these different solutions that are solving these these problems that are coming up and evolving as as data centers become mainstream and we’re working that on in real time.

So thinking about this, what breaks technically or economically when someone tries to solve that just same problem with a conventional four hour battery system? you said it a bit there, but any anything else just to put that direct contrast together in terms of yeah, maybe other solutions that are out there and then what you’re bringing to the market?

Raj DasGupta (21:05)

Yeah, the other solutions are they’re good solutions. to tackle the same problem though, what we’ll you’ll end up having is you’ll have to have a lot more of these conventional batteries to deal with the same to come up with the same solution. Right? So you’ll need a lot more space. and the life cycle of the conventional solutions.

May not be the same either, right? So you’ll to replace these units more frequently than an Electrovaya’s product. Ultimately, we would provide a, you know, that’s how we provide these end customers a value, right? well, you need less of them per unit. Yeah, they’re more expensive, but you need half of them. So overall cost is lower. And then you need less land, you need less space. and it’s a proven technology, right? Electrovaya.

Battery technology, this infinity technology is used in lots and lots of warehouses already. Amazon is a key partner of ours, and it’s an extremely safe battery technology. We’ve made you know 35,000 plus systems with this technology with a perfect safety record. And of course, people also know data centers are expensive, they’re often located in urban areas, safety of these energy devices is critical too.

Wes Ashworth (22:17)

absolutely. Good good understanding that again, full context there and the I think the engineering case has become a business case and it makes sense there when you’re talking about yeah, you made maybe over more expensive per unit, but you need less of them. So you know it does work out and the value is there. and maybe you’ve talked about this a little bit, but anything else just to add an additional info on, but you know, data centers already have like they have a UPS system, generator, substations, and increasingly on-site generation as well. anything else to add in terms of like where does high power storage fit into that stack.

Raj DasGupta (22:44)

so the ElvaPulse is there, the first product, the ElvaPulse 1500, is there to be an alternative to the current state-of-the-art for energy storage with these 20-foot containerized units. We have a second product, which is an 800-volt system, which is designed to effectively act as both the UPS and as a very high power energy storage system to deal with short duration fluctuations.

that product is more design is designed to be paired with the next generation data centers and it’s a little further behind in development for us. But both of which I think have huge potential to be used in both current generation and when the next generation data centers come in those as well.

Wes Ashworth (23:28)

Yeah, really useful. I think, battery never operates independently from the rest of the electrical architecture. So good to understand how that fits in. anything else in terms of like what part of today’s data center power infrastructure could he batteries and solutions like yours sort of eventually make smaller, simpler, or even just unnecessary altogether?

Raj DasGupta (23:45)

Yeah, the current UPS systems they rarely get they’re designed to provide four minutes of backup power. and they don’t get used much. If you know, if you can combine the use piece of a UPS with a energy storage, you’re you’re doing more with less. that’s a benefit for everybody. and then the more power dense and reliable and long life the solutions that we can come up with. Ultimately that’ll make these these sites more efficient.

Wes Ashworth (24:14)

Yeah, I love that. simpler, more efficient. And you sometimes the biggest value of new technology is the equipment allows you to not have or be able to just make more efficient and have less of. so far as we’ve been talking through system design and customer economics a bit, none of that matters unless the battery can handle those demanding power profiles repeatedly, safely, and over a long operating life. And so I’m gonna spend some time there. But high power normally creates concerns around heat and degradation.

How do you push a battery harder without giving up long cycle life?

Raj DasGupta (24:41)

great, great question. So one of the if you look at the infinity technology, it’s got the ceramic separator. We and that really the main benefit of that technology is safety, right? So ceramics stable at high temperature. it makes the likelihood of a battery to catch fire lower, and even more importantly, that thermal runaway as it would normally cascade in a battery pack.

That probably significantly mitigated as well. The other aspect is we took advantage of this technology by developing customized electrolytes and customized cell design to take advantage of some of those properties. And the outcome of that was the longer life, the longer cycle life, and the higher power, the lower resistance essentially, so enabling higher charge.

and discharge rates. and so looking at that point, we get normally if your NMC graphite cells would typically be limited to maybe two, four thousand cycles. Ours are in real use doing you know fifteen thousand cycles. And so we have more to play with. degrees of freedom. We can run our cells a little hotter. We can we already get a little benefit on power density. So that’s how we’re essentially doing this. We’re we’re really put taking our our technology, taking full advantage of it and running it at its optimum level.

Wes Ashworth (26:05)

Yeah, it’s awesome, it’s oftentimes in the high power battery, that central engineering tension is right there. So good to cover that. And you know, I think that peak performance obviously matters much less if a system cannot repeat it reliably over a long operating life. And something you just mentioned there, I mean Electrovaya talks about that cycle life measured in tens of thousands of cycles. And you mentioned fifteen thousand cycles. Like what should a customer actually understand when they hear a number like fifteen thousand cycles?

Raj DasGupta (26:28)

Yeah, actually the fifteen thousand is a real use case, right? If you look at and we’ve been doing this testing for now years, right and the testing, third-party testing started in twenty nineteen and it’s still running. and so if you take the cell and you chart you take it from zero to a hundred percent state of charge, which no actual applications can do, you have to leave a little gap, and you do that.

it’ll cycle maybe 9,000 times before it reaches 80% of its initial life. But in actual case you don’t take it to 100 and you don’t take it to zero, you take it maybe to 95 and 5. That will enable about 15,000 cycles, and that’s been proven over and over again. every battery that we’ve produced for material handling, and these are devices that get you know your cars, your electric cars, people are more familiar with those, those

You do one cycle maybe once or twice a week, right? And these warehouses they’re doing that per day. and every single one of the batteries we’ve delivered to NAT space to companies like Walmart, Amazon, and they use these devices as twenty-four-seven, every one of those is still in use today.

Wes Ashworth (27:34)

Love that. And very important distinction. just understanding those the that cycle number and bringing that to a real world example too. I love that. thinking about safety a bit, you know, Electrovaya also talks about a perfect field safety record. what exactly does perfect mean when you define a battery safety incident?

Raj DasGupta (27:50)

It means absolutely no safety incidents have occurred at the battery, right? So and that is unusual stat, especially with the number of batteries we’ve delivered. so battery fires are you know not good not good events by any means, but typically they happen you know on your scooters or even your electric cars, and those are outdoors and people can tolerate it. I mean.

gasoline engines also catch fire. But inside buildings where you got hundreds of these devices operating 24-7 and these are large batteries, that is a different problem if you have a fire. And so I think the customers we target are more conscious of the safety benefit as opposed to maybe a consumer application.

Wes Ashworth (28:32)

Yeah, absolutely. It’s incredible. I appreciate you putting a precise definition around a claim like that. It’s remarkable. and safety becomes much more useful to discuss when everyone understands exactly what’s being measured and what that looks like, but incredible safety record there. Your ceramic separator is central to the technology story. You mentioned that earlier. when something starts going wrong inside a cell, what does that separator actually do differently than than the kind of normal situation?

Raj DasGupta (28:53)

Yeah, great, great question, Wes. So in your typical battery, like let’s say your cell phone battery, it works fine almost all the time and you’re not too worried about it. But let let’s say something does happen, let’s say you have external puncture happens, or an internal short, some something wrong with the cell. What typically happens is there becomes a hot spot in that battery.

And once the temperatures reach just above boiling temperature of water, let’s say 110 degrees Celsius, your typical battery separators, which are made of polymers, they will shrink. And if you’ve ever taken a lighter to a plastic bag, but it comes out to the same thing, right? You heat it up and it will get smaller. If that happens in your lithium-ion battery, the separator is no longer separating, plus and minus.

You get a larger short circuit, which turns into a fire. And making matters worse, the neighboring cell, if there is a neighboring cell and there usually is, will get exposed to that heat, its separators will shrink, it will catch fire and just becomes a chain reaction. Which is why on these electric car packs or any larger battery system, which does unfortunately catch fire, they’re very difficult to stop.

because you’re trying to bring down the temperature below an extremely low number, which is often why it’s also called thermal runaway And in our case, that separator membrane is it’s a ceramic membrane. So you can take a blowtorch to it will remain intact. And that really provides that safety benefit

Wes Ashworth (30:25)

Yeah, to as you said, to the customers that need it most and care ultimately about that, safety and having like you said, pretty much perfect record on safety. That explains it and helps us understand why is that? Why is it so much safer? so if if the technology works at the cell and system level, the next test is whether you can really manufacture it consistently and at scale. And this is where the story, I think, moves from you know battery science into industrial execution and where a lot of ambitious battery companies have struggled.

bringing cell manufacturing to Jamestown is I know it’s taking years of work. You know, what is what has been harder about reshoring lithium ion manufacturing than you’d expected?

Raj DasGupta (30:59)

so reshoring that this technology is extremely important to us. and we’re well underway on that achieving that dream. So the team in Jamestown is growing and a large number of them are right now at our equipment suppliers watching that final testing of our key manufacturing lines right now, as we speak. and so When this comes online early in 27, it will be one of you know a relatively small number of high technology battery manufacturing sites in the US. and we think this is this is just the start, right? So this Jamestown, I call Jamestown phase one. we’re gonna prove it out, and if successful, we’re gonna continue to grow it.

Wes Ashworth (31:41)

It’s incredible, not an easy feat to do. And yeah, that industrial scale-up contains so much a lot of complexity. It really shows up in the headlines and so much that goes into that. and you we know like US battery manufacturing has a mixed track record, you know, several well-funded efforts that faced delays, cost overruns, or you know, or failed outright. what do you think the industry keeps maybe underestimating? And what has Electrovaya done differently at Jamestown that, you know, lets you stay on schedule?

Raj DasGupta (32:05)

Yeah, I I’d say like you said, Wes, mm manufacturing at scale is always more challenging than people sometimes assume and that’s fine because otherwise you wouldn’t take the plunge. but we’ve done a lot of steps to reduce the risk. And first of all, we already make these cells under contract, right? So we’re not trying to reinvent it’s not the first time we’re gonna make this product. and secondly the team that’s been involved in the first you know existing projects is focused on this. We’ve on brought in additional talent, you know, from there were some battery plants which closed in Michigan over the last year. We hired some people from there and you know folks who have a lot of experience in the battery industry. And so bringing that, you know, A team in. and then finally just working very closely with the suppliers, running the equipment. Today, as we speak, we’re running that entire production line right now. It just happens to be in Korea today, but we’re running the line with our existing supply chain and materials, making sure it works with our separators, and then when we’re when we’re satisfied we’re gonna pack it up and reset up the line in Jamestown.

Wes Ashworth (33:10)

Yeah, It’s really important distinctions there because as we know, like capital alone clearly doesn’t solve the manufacturing problem. And it, you know, it sounds like we see this constantly on the show. It’s execution becomes the differentiator once everybody has access to, you know, similar equipment and capital. really makes a difference. So it’s always amazing to see that. And we talk, you know, constantly about factory announcements and government incentives. is the Is the more underrated bottleneck actually people? you mentioned there about an A plus team. I agree wholeheartedly in that. can America build battery factories faster than it could build the workforce to run them?

Raj DasGupta (33:42)

certainly it comes down to team is the most important, right? You can have whatever equipment and you need, but if you don’t have the right people, it’s not gonna work. fortunately the right people do exist. you just have to get them on your on your baseball team. and that’s what we’re doing. I think we’re gonna prove as you mentioned, the track record in US and North America in general for battery manufacturing has been mixed. I think we can change that outlook.

Wes Ashworth (34:08)

Yeah, I agree. I’m excited to watch it and stay stay in tune closely. And, workforces and it’s easy to overlook because capital and equipment are much more visible, but how important that is and having those right folks in there. As you said, they’re out there. you just have to, you have to have the right environment and right thought process and be able to attract them to you. But it does it a lot of times it’s make or break having those right people in place. I love that. here’s maybe the uncomfortable question about made in America.

if if so much of the battery supply chain still runs through Asia, as we’re all aware, how American can an American made battery realistically be today?

Raj DasGupta (34:39)

So, our supply chain is will you know, when we start production in Jamestown, a lot of the suppliers are based in Korea, especially Japan. really we won’t be directly purchasing anything from China. in and that’s sort of the direction I think needs to happen in order to make maintain a stronger domestic and call it friend shoring or whatever want to call it. that that’s phase one. As volumes pick up, naturally I think more and more of these supply chains will be domesticated. this and this is a you know a strategic industry. batteries are important for so many you know consumer driven products but also your your energy infrastructure, your defence infrastructure. And so I think it’s a more or less a bipartisan thing that supporting domestic battery manufacturing is gonna be gonna be important.

Wes Ashworth (35:30)

Yeah, I appreciate your you providing additional context there. I know probably the audience is thinking at listening to it, and it’s good to speak directly to it. And it’s one of the things too. It does take time, it doesn’t happen overnight. but it’s cool to see it, see it happening, and that really is starting to get legs as well too. and overall, like the battery conversation has shifted from mainly decarbonization toward reliability, AI, defense, and domestic manufacturing and energy security.

has that change actually altered investment decisions, or has the language changed faster than the economics?

Raj DasGupta (36:01)

Yeah, I think the language changes the economics remain the same. fundamentally i this whether the batteries are battery tech, you know, things are being electrified. Your your heavy duty trucks were that’s gonna be electrified. Your passenger vehicles, a high percentage of them are gonna be electrified. Your robo taxis, etc. And so that’s on you know things that jet common people will see and touch and then there’s the energy infrastructure, the data centers, the and then also drones, etc. So there’s such a wide variety of applications that call for this domestic supply being important, whether that be referred to as energy resilience or energy transition, it doesn’t really matter.

Wes Ashworth (36:46)

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I agree. I agree with you. you know, it does feel a little bit like, you know, an entirely different group of decision makers are entering the energy conversation and talking about it and thinking about it, investing in it, which is great. You know, love to see that as well too. and sort of final, you know, question here as we get close. So we’ve gone from science inside the cell to customer economics to AI infrastructure, then all the way through sort of realities manufacturing to supply chains. after new nearly two decades inside this industry, I you again, you have a rare advantage point on Which assumptions are durable and which ones may not survive the next decade? But spending most of your career inside the industry, like what does the battery world broadly believe today that you think will look obviously wrong ten years from now? and then a second question is like, what makes you up most optimistic about what comes next?

Raj DasGupta (37:29)

Yeah, I’d say the batteries, twenty years ago were already important. Today they’re substantially more important. And over the next twenty years that level of importance on a global, you know, industry is just going to increase, right? So I’d say, that’s how this is gonna evolve. Of course, battery technology continues to improve as we’ve continues to do over the last, 20 years. That said, it’s not like if you read the Wall Street Journal, sometimes you might think the battery technology’s gonna more reflect changes that have occurred in semiconductors. And it’s not quite like that. It’s chemistry, it moves slowly, some degree is wet chemistry. So it takes a lot of validation of technology, a bit of a slower change rate. But that said it’ll continue to improve.

and i think the most most saliently the importance of the space is going to become more reflected in policy than it even is today.

Wes Ashworth (38:24)

Yeah, absolutely. I think enormous complexity ahead, but also an extraordinary amount of innovation happening and growth happening at the same time. It’s really exciting to see how quickly It’s all coming together as well too. Even even if it is a little slower than other things out there, but still moving pretty quick. any kind of final pieces of wisdom, words to add, things you didn’t get to share, anything to leave the audience with?

Raj DasGupta (38:45)

the main thing is, I think, the industry is gonna do well. and you know, I’m very excited about Electrovaya’s future. I think we’ve carved out a technology niche which really serves the way our our industry is gonna move, right? It’s gonna call for batteries which are safer, domestically manufactured, that have high power capability and last a long time. Those are precisely the attributes that Electrovaya brings to the table.

Wes Ashworth (39:11)

Yeah, exciting place I think to end and wrap up and thinking about the future and what’s what’s possible there. I know I’ll certainly, you know, pay close attention to Electrovaya and the story and how it all unfolds as well. but great conversation. I think, you know, overall just really understanding and I appreciate you joining me and helping us just unpack, not just where bat battery technology is going, but how those economics, manufacturing, energy system around it are changing as well.

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