Comment by Aloisius
5 days ago
No company involved in lithium ion batteries just popped up out of nowhere.
Whittingham worked for ExxonMobil. Akira Yoshino worked at a joint venture of Toshiba and Asahi Kasei. And Yoshio Nishi worked at Sony.
They were all giant well-established companies.
Plus, every major battery and car company is chasing solid state battery technology as the holy grail. And lots of startups.
When I was buying lithium ion cells a few years ago for a custom off-grid battery build, CATL cells had the best reviews and testing results around.
They were founded in 2011 as a spin-off from ATL, itself founded in 1999 by a Chinese billionaire (Robin Zeng). They definitely didn't pop up out of nowhere.