The Energy Gang

This week on Watt It Takes: How a Ukrainian immigrant quietly toiled away on a new battery chemistry and created a billion-dollar unicorn.Powerhouse CEO Emily Kirsch sits down with Gene Berdichevsky, the CEO of Sila Nanotechnologies.Sila is developing a new lithium-ion battery chemistry that uses silicon in place of graphite — leading to an improvement in battery density by 20 percent. This spring, Daimler led a $170 million round in Sila, valuing the startup at $1 billion.Berdichevsky was the seventh employee at Tesla, where he developed the Roadster’s battery.For the last eight years, Berdichevsky’s team at Sila has been working on a drop-in replacement for today’s lithium-ion batteries.This conversation was recorded live at Powerhouse’s headquarters. Buy tickets for upcoming events.Support for this podcast comes from PG&E. Did you know that 20 percent of EV drivers in the U.S. are in PG&E’s service area in Northern California? PG&E is helping to electrify corporate fleet vehicles