Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!
Last Updated on: 9th February 2025, 12:33 pm
Now that President Trump has throttled back on clean tech innovation in the US, the field is wide open for other nations to leap into the gap. And, they are. The latest example is the UK firm Ilika. Known for its micro-batteries, the firm is now heading towards commercial production of its”Goliath” solid-state EV battery with an assist from the UK government.
Concerned? Public opinion still matters. Contact your representatives in Congress.
The Goliath EV Battery Is Coming For Your Fossil Fuels
Ilika crossed the CleanTechnica radar in September, when the company announced that a prototype version of its Goliath solid-state EV battery cell passed a critical safety test.
Things have been moving along quickly since then. On October 3, the company reported that the completion of additional safety tests for its D5 prototype solid-state EV battery.
The safety tests are a significant milestone because the whole point of a solid-state EV battery is to eliminate the fire hazards posed by conventional lithium-ion batteries, while also improving performance. Li-ion batteries deploy flammable liquid electrolytes. Replacing the liquid with non-flammable solid or semi-solid electrolytes is a next-level R&D challenge, but EV battery innovators around the world have begun to crack the code.
A couple of years ago the industry consensus was that solid-state technology would not be ready for primetime until 2030 or after. Ilika is among the battery stakeholders aiming to beat that goalpost.
“The testing reconfirmed the benefits of Goliath relative to lithium-ion equivalent across a number of key variables – reinforcing the fact that Ilika’s cells have the potential to provide electric vehicles (EVs) with lighter, safer, cheaper batteries with longer ranges and faster charging capabilities,” Ilika explained in a press statement.
With completion of D5 testing under its belt, Ilika is ready for the next step, building up to D8 and the production of samples that meet the Minimum Viable Product benchmark later this year.
The Goliath Solid-State EV Battery Is Coming For Your Fossil Fuels
To be clear, today’s Li-ion EV batteries are designed with safety at the forefront. Though fires can occur, they are extremely rare, and they are proportionally more rare than fires involving internal combustion vehicles.
Still, if a solid-state EV battery can reduce if not eliminate the need for elaborate safety systems, the payout can be significant for automakers seeking a foothold in the affordable EV market of the future.
“Improved safety performance of Goliath batteries relative to conventional lithium ion means that EV designers can reduce the mechanical protection and reinforcement that would otherwise be required to protect the battery pack,” Ilika explains. “In turn, this enables lighter and less expensive EV designs that have a longer range for the same amount of energy.”
In addition to passing the simple but all-important nail penetration test, the D5 prototypes also passed muster with the certification firm DEKRA, which confirmed that the battery cells are made of all non-flammable materials.
Your Tax Dollars At Work, UK Edition
The Goliath battery surfaced on the CleanTechnica radar again on January 24, when we took note of the solid-state EV battery research under way at the University of Oxford. The school also provides a top notch testing ground for battery makers, including Ilika.
In the latest development, earlier this month Ilika described the role that the government-funded UK Battery Industrialisation Centre has played in the development of a commercial-ready solid-state EV battery.
“Based in Coventry, our publicly-funded battery product development facility welcomes manufacturers, entrepreneurs, researchers and educators, and can be accessed by any organisation with existing or new battery technology,” UKBIC says of itself.
On February 5, Ilika announced that the UKBIC collaboration has demonstrated that the Goliath battery can be manufactured in a giga-scale factory using standard roll-to-roll equipment already in use by battery makers, reflecting an industry-wide scale-up strategy for cutting solid-state manufacturing costs.
“Ilika’s technology is a great example of the kind of cutting edge thinking which can drive the UK economy when properly supported,” noted UKBIC Managing Director Sean Gilgunn, who seemed to be aiming his comments straight at the blanket freeze of federal clean tech programs ordered by President Trump.
UK government support for Ilika and its new solid-state EV battery includes an 18-month, £2.7 million grant delivered to Ilika in 2023 from the Automotive Transformation Fund, focusing on roll-to-roll manufacturing technology. In addition to the UKBIC collaboration, the program has paired Ilika with the global assembly automation firm Mpac Group and the battery manufacturer Agratas, a branch of Tata Group.
“The ongoing trials are providing evidence that Ilika’s approach to large format solid-state battery manufacture can be carried out with the types of mixing and coating equipment widely used in existing gigafactories,” Ilika emphasizes.
Hold on to your hats. In concert with Mpac and Agratas, Ilika is sticking to its timetable for testing a solid-state EV battery assembly line with the aim of producing prototype pouch cells for shipment to automotive OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers. As of this writing, Ilika expects the 1.5-gigawatt facility to be operational by the end of Q2 this year. That’s a rather ambitious deadline, but Ilika anticipates that its solid-state battery can be applied to Agratas’s manufacturing process with few, if any, obstacles in the way.
Meanwhile, Over Here In The US
Unbelievable as it is, a full blown coup attempt is now under way as President Trump reaches out to demolish every federal agency through his megadonor and advisor, Elon Musk, who has reportedly turned the hands-on work over to a small team of unaccountable teenagers and twenty-somethings.
If markets speak volumes EV buyers have already let their wallets to the talking, resulting in the collapse of Tesla sales in some markets including the US. However, that’s not enough.
“Attempt” is still the operative word here. Although the Republican party controls all three branches of government, they only hold the House by a hair. The seemingly small step of contacting one’s representatives in Congress is already having a cumulative impact, flooding Republican and Democratic members alike in a tsunami of public opinion that could motivate at least a handful of Republican representatives to re-establish Congressional control of federal spending.
Supporting the organizations that are taking Trump and Musk to court with small-dollar (or large-dollar) donations is another meaningful action. Trump and Musk have lost every one of 16 major challenges in courts so far, and more are on the way. Both have indicated they will ignore the rulings, providing voters with yet another reason to encourage their representatives in Congress to take action as the legal challenges continue to mount.
Experts on authoritarianism advise the public can best support a coup by doing nothing. Well, have at it (here’s that contact link again).
Image: Trump or no Trump, the high performing, non-flammable solid-state EV battery of the future is heading for gigascale production in the UK and elsewhere around the world (courtesy of Ilika).
Chip in a few dollars a month to help support independent cleantech coverage that helps to accelerate the cleantech revolution!
Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.
Sign up for our daily newsletter for 15 new cleantech stories a day. Or sign up for our weekly one if daily is too frequent.
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.
CleanTechnica’s Comment Policy