Press Clips

UNIGRID Fully Charged for Increased Production

San Diego Business Journal | November 5, 2025

UNIGRID, Inc. is poised to expand its production capacity 20-fold over the next year following the sodium-ion battery company's rapid growth in foundry partnerships. "We are a fabless battery company," CEO Darren Tan said. "So we work with battery foundries to produce what we need; we buy commodity materials, we ship to them, they make it based on our proprietary recipe and the finished products get shipped directly to the customer." Tan co-founded the company with CTO Erik Wu out of UC San Diego, where both men completed their PhDs. Full Story

The best source of critical minerals is driving down U.S. streets

The Washington Post | October 29, 2025

When an EV battery dies somewhere in North America, there's a good chance it'll wind up at Redwood Materials, the company that runs the biggest lithium-ion battery recycling plant in the United States, to be reborn. Redwood Materials has also debuted a more direct way to reuse old EV batteries: putting them to work powering microgrids. "Secondary use is a no-brainer," said Zheng Chen, a nanoengineering professor at the University of California San Diego. "You have a lot of old batteries which are still okay. It's good to use them before you send them into the recycling proces Full Story

Can new chemistry make EVs that charge in 5 min or less?

C&EN | June 12, 2025

The thing holding back EV adoption right now--besides the relatively high sticker price--is how long it takes to charge the battery. Making a battery that charges faster is not simple; it requires understanding the shortcomings of each component down to the molecular level. Nor is it easy to scale up a new battery's manufacturing to millions of units. Battery start-ups and larger labs scrutinize materials in every part of electric vehicle systems, especially anodes. Full Story