World-Changing Potential of Next-Gen Batteries with Eli Dourado and Ethan Loosbrock (Ouros Energy)
A huge step-function in batteries is coming. Batteries have the potential to become much more energy dense and much more capable. Today, we are going to explore what that means for the world, with two of the guys enabling this power transformation.
Ethan Loosbrock was a battery engineer at multiple startups and has spent some time doing research at MIT. He founded Ouros Energy, a startup building high density batteries.
Eli Dourado studies “transformative hard technology stuff.” He has a PhD in economics, is a senior research fellow at the Center for Growth and Opportunity in Washington DC, and leads a syndicate raising investment to support Ouros.
Disclosure and Caveat: Al, Bo, and I are investors in Ouros through Rolling Fun. Not financial advice, not soliciting. Just bringing you along on what I think is interesting information.
The three of us talk about nanolithia batteries and the ways they can transform transportation, power, electronics, air travel, and even augmented reality. We also talk about recycled and reusable batteries and parallels between the battery industry and the oil industry before Rockefeller.
Links to Platforms:
Here’s what I learned from the episode:
Batteries are an underrated piece of innovation in consumer electronics – a key enabler of the iPhone, for example.
Ethan is confident that with a new cathode chemistry, he can create batteries that are 5-10x more energy dense than existing batteries, at no greater cost.
If batteries get denser, they also get cheaper. Cheaper, denser batteries can mean electric cars that cost less and can drive further than combustion engine vehicles – like… (2,000+ mile range)
Better batteries make solar panels more useful. It means less dependence on the electrical grid. Huge swaths of homes may even be able to completely decouple entirely from the grid.
Lithium is actually relatively abundant, it is light and affordable, making it the best option for batteries.
Eli and I encouraged Ethan to go for the “biggest swing” version of denser batteries, as fast as possible. There is so much transformative potential, every day counts.
A lot of optimism about better batteries has been overshadowed by the number and size of adjacent failures. But the technology is too important to ignore.
(Better batteries also play a huge role in geopolitics. It can mean self-reliance for the US, and less reliance on potentially hostile countries.)
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Learn more about Eli Dourado:
Learn more about Ethan Loosbrock
Additional episodes if you enjoyed:
The Next Industrial Revolution w/ J. Storrs Hall: Nuclear Energy, AI and Nanotechnology
Scaling Nuclear Energy, Saving The World – Bret Kugelmass of Last Energy
Episode Transcript:
Eric Jorgenson: Hello again and welcome. I’m Eric Jorgenson. I don’t know much, but I have some very smart friends, and if you listen to this podcast, then no matter who, where, or when you are, you do too. Together we will explore how technology, investing, and entrepreneurship will create a brighter, more abundant future. Today, my guests in that effort are Ethan Loosbrock and Eli Dourado. Ethan was a battery engineer at multiple startups who has worked in very relevant labs at MIT. He is now the founder of Ouros Energy, a startup that’s building the world’s highest energy density batteries. Eli studies “transformative hard technology stuff” as the senior research fellow at the Center for Growth and Opportunity in Washington DC. He has a PhD in economics and writes at elidoroudo.com. The three of us today will explore the coming ground breaking new tech in batteries, specifically lithium ion batteries and all the ways they will change transportation, power, electronics, air travel, even augmented reality. In the next hour, you will learn how batteries are about to become much more capable, a huge step function is coming, what the world will look like when they do, the path to fully recycled reusable batteries, and some very interesting parallels at the end between the current battery industry and oil before Rockefeller. This podcast is one of a few projects I work on. To read my book, blog, newsletter, or invest alongside us in early stage tech companies, please visit ejorgenson.com. As I’m sure you know, nothing on this podcast is ever financial advice or solicitation to invest, but I want to offer a specific disclosure on this episode. I am a small investor in Ethan’s company Ouros. We invested through Rolling Fun, the early stage tech fund I manage with my two partners, Al and Bo. You can invest alongside us in great founders like Ethan. These early stage startups often fundraise really quickly and really quietly. We are lucky to gain access to some of these great companies, and we welcome you to join us. The past year, we’ve invested in 22 companies including Alo who’s building nuclear fission micro reactors, Gently.com who is building the Amazon of secondhand shopping, and a construction company powered by flying drones. It’s very cool. I hope to do an episode with them someday soon. If you love these conversations and supporting the next generation of founders building these transformative companies, you’ll love the portfolio and being a part of it. You can check out some of the podcast episodes with Al and Bo to learn more about Rolling Fun. I’m honored that over 50 listeners have already joined the fund as investors. You can learn more at rolling.fun, FUN, which is linked in the show notes below. Accredited investors can invest with us through Angel List today. And as always with a rolling fun, the sooner you invest, the more deals you get exposure to. If you have questions or would like to learn more, please reach out. Now with both ears and everything in between, please enjoy this conversation arriving in three, two, one.
I'm very excited to talk to both of you guys. Eli, I had the pleasure of meeting you at, was that a Foresight conference, I think, in San Francisco?
Eli Dourado: Yeah, that's right.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. And I've been reading your stuff for a long time and love it. And Ethan and I had met previous to you guys meeting. And then I found out you two were working together. So, this is a really like great excuse to have you on the podcast, share what I learned from Ethan and just like bring the knowledge of batteries that you guys are working on to the world. So, Eli, are you cool with maybe starting with a little quick background of yourself and introduction?
Eli Dourado: Sure, absolutely. So, I am Eli Dourado. I'm a senior research fellow at the Center for Growth and Opportunity. I also just really love helping early stage startups get going. And so, I work on a little bit- I have a small syndicate, a very low volume syndicate that I run and try to work with hard tech founders to get their businesses off the ground and do awesome things in the world, which is what I want to see.
Eric Jorgenson: Nice. I think your pinned tweet is like just a rant of like all the futuristic things that you want to see built. I hope we can do an episode on maybe like each one of those things over time. I think batteries are on that list, aren't they?
Eli Dourado: Yeah, they may not be, actually. So I kind of was sleeping on batteries until I met Ethan and started talking to him about what exactly could we do if we had much denser batteries?
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, well, let's do a quick intro for you, Ethan. And then we'll get into the good stuff.
Ethan Loosbrock: Yeah, sounds good. So, Ethan Loosbrock. I founded a company called Ouros. The main thrust of Ouros is that I believe we can get to batteries that are 10x the energy density of existing batteries. And so, one of the linchpins of that is sort of a new cathode chemistry we're working on. And my background, I studied chemical engineering at the University of Minnesota. I worked at a couple startups, Solid Energy Systems and PolyJoule. And then I spent about a year at MIT doing cathode research and really worked closely with Professor Ju Li at MIT. And that was, I think, formational in shaping some of my views on batteries and really inspiring the main thrust of Ouros.
Eric Jorgenson: All right. So, let's start with dessert and see like why are batteries so important? Like Eli, what did you wake up to in the last little bit that Ethan might have opened your eyes to?
Eli Dourado: Well, there's so much that changes when batteries become denser. So first of all, like batteries become cheaper when they become denser. So, if you look at there's some research by a guy named I think Micah Ziegler who kind of looked at what determines the cost of, what has contributed to the cost of battery- decline in battery costs over the past 30 years or so. And he finds that charge density is like the number one factor in sort of reducing the cost. So, if we want to keep driving the cost down, we've got to go after new chemistries that increase density. We’re kind of right now in a world where we're like continuing to do like very incremental optimizations of basically existing known chemistries, and it's really important to unlock new ones. So then, I mean, when you think about batteries being cheaper and denser, because it's not because they actually come together, you can get into this wild world where your car, your electric car, first of all, actually is cheaper than a combustion engine vehicle now because the batteries are cheaper. And then people talk about range anxiety as being like a big obstacle to electric car adoption. Well, that goes away if you can make your car have a range that's like longer than you can drive in a day. Like, so if you can get like a thousand plus miles of range, then you don't have range anxiety anymore. Nobody worries about it. It actually changes, like you don't need as many charging stations on the highway anymore. Like, that becomes like much less important if you're never going to charge on the highway anymore because you just charge at home or at the hotel or whatever. And then you just keep driving. So, it completely changes cars. I spent part of my career in aviation. I was at Boom for several years, the first policy hire leading their policy team. So, I think a lot about aviation, the aviation industry, and the aviation industry is completely bottlenecked on sort of for EV toll aircraft and other like sort of subsonic commuter planes and stuff like that on energy density. So, the number I've heard is you need like 400 watt hours per kilogram in order to make any of the math on this close. And you really probably need a little bit more on that to make it a viable business. And so, I think if we actually want, or there's this book, Where's My Flying Car? If you actually want your flying car, you need- It's a fantastic book, yes, yes. One of the things that will unlock your flying car is battery density. And then I just think there's probably a million different things. So if you think about like, okay, so like Apple, I guess this is coming out in several weeks, but Apple just like last week unveiled their new headset, the new VR headset, and it's like, okay, it's got two hours of battery life and its got like its external battery pack, and they didn't want to put it on your head because it weighs too much. That right there is like immediately, we see like, oh, just the bottleneck there is battery density. Now, I hope we do a lot more than just like personal computer devices and stuff like that. But I just think throughout the whole economy, there's going to be all kinds of things that are enabled by denser batteries.
Ethan Loosbrock: Yeah, absolutely. I was just going to mention, there's a, I think, I don't know where this project has gone. But Google, at one point, had a project where they were sort of trying to do some AR stuff within a contact lens. So basically, having a micro battery in the lens on your eyeball. And there again, it was just like they couldn't get good enough batteries to last long enough in a small enough format to like fit there. And so, that's sort of like a weird other AR application for this stuff.
Eli Dourado: I spend a lot of time also thinking about like electricity and electricity grid and electricity markets and electricity generation and stuff like that. And a big thing that people talk about is like we need lots more transmission. And we need to build these plants, these solar plants in the middle of the desert and sort of pipe the electricity in to where people live and stuff. And man, I just think like if you had ultra cheap batteries because they're denser, and so the same amount of materials is used, but the same mass of materials is used, but you get a lot more power out of it, it could be trivial to put like 100 kilowatt hours of battery in like every home in America. And then all of a sudden, like solar panels really become viable, like rooftop solar becomes really viable. And you could even like disconnect everybody from the grid, like every residence that is like not an apartment building. Because if you have some rooftop and you have 100 kilowatt hours of storage, that is enough in huge swaths of the country to just completely decouple from the grid, and you don't need to be on there at all. And you save all the fight that we're having now about like how do we increase transmission on the grid, or how do we do interconnection, that all goes away. So, there's so much that it just solves, and those people can stop fighting, and they can just get back to work doing other productive things.
Eric Jorgenson: Well, let's hope they stop fighting. They could stop fighting, let's see. The renewable power shifting all gets easy, the nuclear, the like adjusting anything that's stored through nuclear, like I think I've heard Elon talk about like for the electrification of the whole economy, we just need- and to transition to sustainable energy, we just need massive, massive, massive amounts of batteries that we don't yet have, and the better they are, the fewer we're going to need.
Ethan Loosbrock: Yeah, I mean, that's like I think an underappreciated point about higher energy density batteries is for a given amount of storage, you have to process a given amount of materials. If your materials hold more energy, like you just have to process less material. So it means like less manufacturing capacity, less plants that need to be built, even things as trivial as like transporting these batteries after they're made gets easier because you can fit more on a truck or a rail car. So there's these weird like synergies where as you go to higher and higher energy densities, it just like makes everything cheaper.
Eric Jorgenson: Could you explain, Ethan, a little bit about why energy density is like the key metric for evaluating batteries’ quality?
Ethan Loosbrock: Yeah, I mean, it sort of like encompasses all of the input. So, I don't know, this might be a bad reference, but some engineers will be familiar with like non dimensional numbers. And usually, these numbers are like they try to encompass all of the important parameters for whether it's flow in a pipe, and the number of gives you some indication of the behavior of that physical system. And so, for batteries, it's like for different applications, it determines how much energy you have, but also how much weight penalty comes with that energy. And so, if you- the amount of electrons goes into it, the weight of the materials goes into it, the sort of embodied cost associated with that, making that weight of materials goes into it. And so, it's just like sort of all encompassing metric that we use to measure like how efficient it is. And it's not even just specific to batteries. Like you can- it's sort of usable across fields. So, there's this great book by Vaclav Smil, that he just details like how almost everything can be measured across different systems as energy or power density. And so, he looks at like, okay, how much land is needed for a given energy source? How much the shift from like wood based fuels to coal to oil, and basically how, as we've shifted to higher and higher energy density materials, we just get much better standards of living because things just get cheaper, performance of things gets better. And so, you need to spend less time, less energy, less resources to do the things that you want to do, whether it's cooking or traveling or heating your home.
Eric Jorgenson: Where does energy density come from in a battery? Eli, you sort of alluded earlier to the chemistry that happens to a given mass input for a battery. And I know that's, Ethan, where you worked for a while. But can we give a sense of that? Because it feels a little like alchemy. Like, the same amount of mass goes in, but due to the way that you process it and manufacture it and what goes in, very different capabilities sort of come out the other side.
Eli Dourado: So maybe I should give the- sort of take a stab at a layman's answer. And then Ethan can like tell me I've got it or I don't have it. So, the layman's answer, I think, is like how are you actually storing the lithium ions on each side of the battery? Like, are you storing them- Are you kind of like not reacting them and like holding them in between like a lattice between other stuff? Or are you reacting them and making them part of an additional molecule? And it turns out, if you store them in a sort of reactive way, then that enables like much higher density of those ions. And then that, in turn, allows you, as they move from side to side, then that allows more electron stuff to obviously flow across the connection points. So how did I do, Ethan? You can correct me.
Ethan Loosbrock: That's very good. I think the only thing I would add is, as you pointed out, like the electrons are stored in these reactions between lithium and other materials. And so, if they're reacted, they're stable. So, you can sort of imagine it as like there's a reservoir on top of a hill and a reservoir on bottom. And lithium, if you have pure lithium, it's just super reactive. And so, it's not very reversible, so you can't really go back and forth. But if you have like materials on either side, then it's reversible. And so, the whole idea of getting to higher energy density is like lowering the weight of these other materials that lithium reacts with in proportion to like how much lithium you have. So, it's always like this ratio of like active to inactive materials. And so if you can just like minimize all of the inactive stuff and make more lithium be part of the reaction, then you'll get better batteries. And it's not specific just to lithium, like you can use- Traditionally, we've had like lead acid batteries, some people are working on sodium, potassium type batteries. But as it turns out, lithium is super light and is incredibly good for batteries because it's so light.
Eric Jorgenson: That was one of the things that I was excited about as I sort of started to wrap my head around your approach is like it's kind of staggering that we use lithium ion, basically all the scales that we were talking about, from like homes to cars to laptops to phones. I don't know if you remember, like was the contact lens thing also a lithium ion battery?
Ethan Loosbrock: Yeah, they were trying to use lithium battery for sure. There's really like beyond lithium, if you think lithium is only like seven atomic mass units, so there's very few elements that are lighter than that, like hydrogen and helium. But hydrogen comes with a whole host of challenges. Helium is very scarce. So luckily, like lithium without- despite all of the scare mongering, it's like relatively abundant. And so, like that sort of abundance with the lightness of the metal makes it a good pick.
Eli Dourado: Like beryllium could be theoretically denser. Like, because it's got like two charge units for just like two more atomic units, mass units. But yeah, it's like insanely expensive. And there's all kinds of like problems with like reacting it. So, lithium is probably the best that we're going to do.
Ethan Loosbrock: Yeah, I agree. I mean, the other challenge is like with metals that can hold- that have like more than one electron, the sort of multivalence species is what those are called. And it adds like- it's sort of like orders of magnitude more complex to make systems with those because like the first electron you put on it is easier, but the second one makes it very, very hard. And it makes it very sluggish when you're charging and discharging.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, it also builds upon the existing battery supply chain that we've got. So like we don't have to find rare earth minerals or synthesize any new things. It's just like an improvement of the manufacturing, the chemistry really piece of the manufacturing process that goes into these, the same kind of batteries that we’re already building that can represent this huge sort of step function in capabilities. And I think it’s worth sort of highlighting how big that is. Like, Eli, maybe you are the best suited to sort of give a little bit of a history of like battery improvements historically, but this has a potential to be like a very, very big jump.
Eli Dourado: Yeah, I think that's right. It’s an enormous potential. I think, to riff on one of the things you mentioned, in terms of like mining and acquiring minerals and stuff, obviously, like logically, like if you're denser for the same amount of minerals, you're reducing your dependence on mining, on mining new minerals, you're reducing your dependence on importing minerals from countries that could be hostile or countries where they- where there's human rights conditions you don't want to mess with and so on. You're just making the whole thing much, much more efficient, but also just like better from a geopolitical standpoint. In terms of the improvements that we've had over the years, my understanding is like lithium ion batteries have been around for several decades in some form. And they have just sort of gradually improved over time. Sort of the industry has operated on this sort of incremental, taking incremental steps forward and improving the chemistries, relying on materials that get cheaper, like changes in the chemistry of this sort of mix of like the other minerals involved. So, nickel, manganese cobalt, for example, they've shifted from like one to one ratios of- one to one to one ratios of kind of those to like eight to one to one ratios just to economize on cost. People have been more recently working on batteries that don't require those minerals like lithium ferro phosphate batteries that avoid some of that mineral usage, but also come at a weight penalty. So again, they're like less dense than sort of the cutting-edge lithium ion batteries. And so, I think that this space, I think there's, we're close to exhausting the gains from like sort of a traditional way of doing things in terms of just continually optimizing the process. And really, we're at a point where we do need new chemistries to be able to drive the space forward.
Ethan Loosbrock: I think, yeah, that's 100% right. I think- So I guess, John Goodenough introduced lithium cobalt oxide in 1970. It took a couple of decades, and like Sony really like launched the first lithium ion battery with graphite and lithium cobalt oxide. I think, I don't think Sony even really recognized like how big it would be. And certainly, I think Goodenough didn't really necessarily recognize it either. And it took 50 years for John Goodenough to actually receive like a Nobel Prize for his work. But I think people have really come to realize like how big it was. And to Eli's point, it has just been incremental stuff that they've done, and they basically swapped out, like he mentioned different transition metals, so cobalt and, sorry, nickel and manganese for lithium cobalt oxide. And it's actually still like more or less the same in terms of energy density. And so a lot of the gains have just come from scale, some manufacturing improvements. And like we're still- as time has gone on, we've just been approaching the price of those materials since the energy density is not changing. And so if you can both use higher energy density materials and eliminate some of those costly materials that they use for existing batteries, then you can sort of introduce a new, like shift that curve up, if you will, and give like a new parameter space to optimize. And so, like the more shifts you can do of that curve, the more applications open up for batteries. And I mean, I think batteries, like a lot of people have recognized that batteries are used in all sorts of places today that many people thought they never would be. And some of these applications didn't even exist when the first batteries were introduced. So like a lot of people have recognized the importance of how computing has advanced with Moore's law and how instrumental that was for the introduction of something like the iPhone, but one underappreciated advance included in the iPhone in 2007 was like how the lithium ion battery played a central role for enabling the sort of power usage that they needed.
Eli Dourado: I think batteries have a really interesting interplay with power draw as well. Like, there's a company, I think SF based, called Impulse Labs, and they're trying to solve for like how do we get more induction cooktops installed. So right now, like I have a gas range at home, and I'd love to have an induction cooktop. But if I wanted to do that, I would have to get an electrician to come out and like run a new line from my kitchen to my electrical panel because the power draw of those cooktops is just too high, unless you use a battery, it turns out. And so Impulse Labs, like what they're doing is they're like putting a battery on it, like letting the battery charge like when you're not using the cooktop which is like most of the time, and then when you are using it, it's combining the draw from like AC and the battery. And the battery itself has like enough power draw to power the whole cooktop even if your power was like we're completely disconnected from the grid. So it's like you kind of like can save on sort of like the high power draw of batteries can like economize on like electricians needing to come out and like run new lines in your house. So it's like pretty awesome.
Ethan Loosbrock: Yeah, I was just going to say that's almost like a micro- That's like the transmission point you made earlier, but on a micro scale. You're just like, yeah.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, the more batteries- the cheaper batteries get, the more use cases expand for them. Like you can totally- Why aren't refrigerators sold with like a backup battery inside that can just keep your food cold for 48 hours if the power goes out? Like that should be a relatively simple, straightforward, easy thing to do. You can imagine a router having a small battery, like keeps your Wi-Fi up for 12 hours if your power goes out. Like these are small power draw things that like, especially as blackouts happen more and more, you don't have to power the whole home, you can, like a lot of things will get included there. And what happens with a huge 5, 7,10x step function in energy density, like batteries become the default path for so many more things. I mean, a thousand mile range on a car is like that's more than any gas car that isn't massively modified. Like that becomes a much better thing for much cheaper like basically overnight. So it's easier, though still hard to imagine all the things that could get better. It's the second order of like where are all the places batteries might go if they have these capabilities that they don't today is like really, really exciting.
Ethan Loosbrock: I think like there's other sorts of transmission that are, sort of riffing on Eli's transmission point is like, if you- you both have read Where's My Flying Car?, if we end up going to sort of a default like flying car and think electric propulsion makes that a lot more feasible, it's a lot louder, a lot cleaner than gas options. But in that sort of world, like you maybe don't need as many roads going to all these places. Like think about all of the roads we have, especially in like rural places that are sort of net negatives on the system because you don't get as much economic value as you put in. And so like all of that could potentially go away if you just are flying place to place. And I think like people always think like, oh well, these flying cars will use so much more energy, but it's not always the case. Like, if you're flying point to point, the most efficient way is a straight line. And so, roads are rarely made in a way where you can go in a straight line from any point to any other point. And so there's all sorts of weird things that change and like status quos that are sort of up ended in that scenario.
Eli Dourado: I think like personal transportation like e-bikes and scooters, it's going to like, it's just going to completely transform and get like so much better. Like there's a lot of- we have like a bike share system here in the DC area. And those are unpowered bicycles, but like if the batteries were not expensive, I could imagine those are all like e-bikes now. And then that makes more people commute via bike like to work. And that like reduces congestion on the roads and wear and tear on the roads and like so a million different second and third order effects from it being cheap. And if you go to like a congested Asian city, like so many mopeds, terrible air pollution because of it, but like what if you made those like electric and if everybody could have like a super awesome moped and like get around town that way, that would be- that's a cool future that I'd love to see.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, a fully electrified city would be a little- much closer to an urban paradise, I think. Yeah, quieter, cleaner, whisper smooth. Those are cool and efficient. Like you can build a much smaller electric vehicle than you can an internal combustion, just like the number of moving pieces and just the total mass that has to go into it and stuff like that. We probably far surpassed the use cases that like McKinsey imagined when they were estimating battery growth rate. Eli, that was something in your- we should talk about that, how you came to the syndicate that you chose to lead for Ethan here and like how you guys sort of got to know each other and put together, and though maybe the right place to start with that is Ethan’s story. So do you want to, Ethan, do you want to say like how you came into this industry, like how you picked up on batteries being such an important thing and decided to kind of devote your life to this problem and this company?
Ethan Loosbrock: Yeah, absolutely. So I guess going way back, I was sort of an environmentalist growing up and got into engineering. I like read this magazine Popular Science and followed a lot of the early stuff that Elon Musk and others were doing at Tesla. And so I ended up going to University of Minnesota and picked chemical engineering because it seemed like it was like a good way to solve environmental problems on the front end rather than cleaning them up afterwards. And so, it seemed to me then as now that a lot of the stuff that people were trying to get to work, solar, wind, EVs were limited by the battery. And if you look at EVs today, like a huge amount of the cost is still the battery. If you look at like solar and wind adoption, it's very limited by the cost of batteries. So yeah, I had this internship before my senior year where I just didn't have enough work to do. I would ask for work and it was a small company so they just didn't have enough for me, so I decided to dive into the battery literature and see what people thought was the future. And a lot of people were talking about lithium oxygen batteries and lithium sulfur and some of these chemistries. And then I came across a paper by Professor Li where he sort of detailed how you could take a lithium oxygen system and make it look like a lithium ion system. So, get the energy density benefits without some of the complexity and performance drawbacks of traditional lithium oxygen systems. And so, I tried to take a license for this technology my senior year at Minnesota, and being an undergrad, Professor Li understandably said no. So, I looked for jobs at a battery startup in the Boston area and went to Solid Energy Systems, worked on sort of lithium metal anodes there for two years and just started showing up at Professor Li’s office every couple of weeks and built a relationship with him and then ended up getting hired into his lab, where I again wanted to take this technology out. He, I think, is sort of notoriously- he's somewhat risk averse and is like really a perfectionist in the best way, like he's the top of his field and is like a master of many different sciences. And so, he had me work on a slightly different cathode. He had me work on more of like an adaptation to an existing cathode material. And so, I took that sort of from bench scale to pilot scale, and then COVID hit, and any sort of chance of starting a company with him at that time went to zero. And so, I went to PolyJoule and designed an electrolyte for them that was like 50% higher energy density and about half the cost. And then during COVID, some of the MIT like patents around this stuff were abandoned. And so I saw that as the opportunity to really jump in and pursue this full time. And I think my skill sets have grown through these experiences, and my network has gotten a lot better. And so, I think the odds are much better now than they were when I was in an undergrad position. So I feel like much more confident in my ability to actually make this happen.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, it feels like your vision is so compelling here. And the gains, the size of the prize is so big if we can build what you think we can build here. It feels like a lot of people have been rallying around this even at really early stages, which is super exciting. And Eli's one of those people. So, I want to hear the story, that I haven't heard actually, of you guys sort of finding each other and coming together.
Eli Dourado: Yeah. So, I first I heard about Ethan from Austin Vernon, a friend of mine, who was just like, hey, I was talking to this guy Ethan, and he's got a really cool battery ideas, and he's trying to start something up, you should talk to him. So, I did. And I had a call with Ethan and tried to like understand what he was doing and sort of took me a while. I don't have an electrochemistry background. So, I just sort of stayed in touch with Ethan for a while and just like kept peppering him with questions over Twitter DMs, just like question after question of like tell me about this and tell me about this. And sort of like, he would like refer me to like some papers. And so I'd like read those papers. And then sort of- And then I’d ask more questions and stuff. And I was like, dude, you’ve got to go for like the biggest swing version of this, go as fast as you can towards the best vision of this. And I was like yeah, I totally 100% at that point believed he could do it. And I was just like I'm going to help you do whatever I can and including help you raise some money and find other people that are willing to invest as well. So yeah, that's the story. I mean, I can't emphasize enough like how many questions I asked to get to the point where I could like even have this conversation. But yeah, once I sort of understood what the value was and what is it specifically that needs to be done, it's hard to stop thinking about it because it's like so transformative. And I'll add like part of my process also is like writing about it. So like, most of what I do in my day job is a lot of writing. And so, I think of like writing is a form of thinking. And so like being able to like write down a memo articulating why, what's going on here? And why is it valuable? And what's it going to change? I think that's a way of like actually confronting your own ignorance about what you don't know. And then it's like go back to Ethan and ask more questions. Then when you get to the end of it, you actually know the stuff pretty well. You have a pretty decent view of it.
Ethan Loosbrock: Yeah, I would second that. I think Eli's process has been incredibly diligent. And he is super detail oriented and really like has, I think, better than almost anyone I've talked to understood all aspects of batteries and applications and markets and all of that. So yeah, I think credit to Eli on that.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, Ethan was laughing with Eli, like I asked a lot of questions. He's just like, yeah, it was a lot of questions. But it's a lot to wrap your head around, especially I think, Eli, you alluded to the like what needs to be done. Like it's a lot easier to kind of understand the software development process or see a demo of a thing. And like that was a lot of what we talked about before we invested, Ethan, too, is just kind of like, where are we now? Where are we trying to get? How much is it going to cost? Like, how do we underwrite some of this stuff? It's really- because batteries is a scary place. And I think we can talk about why. But like there's been a lot of, for some reason, a lot of like false claims or a lot of over optimism or something on the history of battery technologies. I’m not sure what the right framing is there.
Ethan Loosbrock: Yeah, I mean, I don't know. It's hard to say which. There's like a spectrum of like over optimism to something more nefarious. And I think most of this stuff starts off from like a good place of just like very optimistic people trying to build something better. And yeah, I mean, there's been a lot of these ventures that have raised lots of money and come to run up against like laws of physics or other challenges, manufacturing challenges down the road. And I think batteries, probably more than a lot of industries, is probably victim to like some of the like herd-like or lemming-like mentality with a lot of industries. And so, like I think there's a few buckets where there have been just enormous amounts of startups, tons of money poured. And there have been some, I would say, minor successes, like there's some like real companies that are around, but I think it just gets overshadowed by just like the size and number of failures that are like adjacent. So yeah, I mean, without calling attention to too many of the failures, I think there's some great companies. Like early on, like in the early 2000s, A123 Systems like launched- they really like brought LFP or lithium iron phosphate to market. They were a legitimate company. They had a great product. They did end up going bankrupt, but not because of their product being inadequate, just because of unfortunate market conditions and some of their customers going under at the wrong time. And more recently, I think there's some great Silicon companies, Group14 and Sila that have made a lot of headway. So, I think it is and can be a scary place. But I think there's still reason to be optimistic about battery improvements.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, I think we have to be. Like, there's probably a little bit of assumption that tons of resources are being poured into it. And we can't outpace the current sort of incremental improvements that we've seen historically. But it's far too important and foundational of a technology to not invest heavily in the research and commercialization and manufacturing of something, especially when you see something with sort of this potential and without really any crazy costs or changes. There's no crazy rare earth things. You don't have to like change the manufacturing process. We don't need any massive changes and things. Like we still get the charging speed and are able to sort of build on everything that the whole industry has already learned about the scale that we're producing lithium ion batteries. Like it seems almost too good to be true in an area where things that have seemed too good to be true are often- have often been claimed. But it's such an important piece. And I think we talked a lot about the foundation of it and how many things it's an input to. But it just seems like a moral imperative to like continue to invest in batteries. And I think we're seeing that more and more. Like more of the electrification is driving that, and the renewables investments are driving that too.
Eli Dourado: One thing that I think is really interesting is through like the Inflation Reduction Act and so on, like there's so many subsidies going into like scaling battery production. And like talking to Ethan, I’m not attributing this view to him, but like sort of what I'm wondering now is like, is that almost like premature? Wouldn't it be better to apply all the scaling like after we increase like further energy density? So, I do worry a little bit that like the battery industry is like having this like sort of premature scaling effect, where we have something that like kind of works. I think it's the same thing in renewables. Like, we know that wind and solar work at least decently well. And so, like there's a big push to like scale them. And then the thing that comes along with that is transmission, like if you're kind of trying to do wind and solar heavy grid with current technology, like you've got to put in like a lot of transmission, and that is massively contentious, as I said. And so, I think sort of a meta point here is like let's get all the sort of gains on the science side and scale that and sort of like not just science but like translational work, and if we can translate like a much better version of battery technology and then scale that, we’ll be in really, really good shape. And it's not the end of the world that maybe we're scaling batteries because there's Ethan's turned me on to plasma recycling. So that's where we can recycle some of those batteries in different ways.
Ethan Loosbrock: Yeah, I mean, I guess there's a few companies now that are working on like you can basically take battery materials and using a plasma pretty much restore it to brand new with very little energy and cost input. And so, it's like, yeah, it's just like a way of refreshing battery materials. So they still do like some mechanical separation, but then you just like run it through the plasma. And then at the end of it, you have like something as good as virgin like battery materials. Yeah, it's pretty cool stuff.
Eric Jorgenson: So once it's manufactured, it has like a much longer potential functioning life?
Ethan Loosbrock: Yeah, pretty much. I mean, the energy input for recycling this stuff and refreshing it is a tiny fraction of what it takes to like mine and move around and manufacture things as if like from scratch. And so, at the end of it, like all of the recycling will just basically reduce the amount of mining and other things we'll need to do. And then it was sort of like an end goal or like final system looks like you not needing to mine hardly anything at all. And then you just like have good enough battery collection services to like recycle all this stuff. So yeah, I mean, there're sort of like nice feedback loops there as well that would drive down the cost of batteries. Because the cost of your input materials would then just like trend towards the energy costs needed to refresh them.
Eli Dourado: So batteries are going to get very, very, very cheap in this scenario, where we have better chemistries and plasma recycling, it's going to get super cheap, like kind of no matter what.
Eric Jorgenson: Over what timescale do you guys do you see this happening?
Ethan Loosbrock: It's a hard question to answer because it sort of depends on like what applications end up using batteries. And so, we haven't even really scratched the surface on that question. And so it's- so yeah, I mean, it's like for cars, like the turnover period for like our fleet of cars is like 20 years. And I think, I mean, we're not even at like 100% EV penetration yet. So, this is sort of like probably multi decadal timescales. And like aerospace hasn't even started electrifying. So it's- So yeah, I think it'll take a while. But yeah. And then I think, on Eli's point on scaling batteries, yeah, I agree. Like, it's probably optimal to scale the right chemistries. And the point about like just getting our sources and things in the US is good. I think there's, I don't know, like I don't think we're the only ones doing- like putting our fingers on the scale. So, I don't really want to make like a fairness argument. But you could make that argument. And I think it's just like, it's just going to become even more critical to have these industries in the United States. So just from a national competitiveness standpoint, like yeah, we need to be making these batteries.
Eric Jorgenson: Is that where some of the policy tailwinds are coming from Eli? Is it sort of geopolitical considerations?
Eli Dourado: Yeah, I think there's a lot of concern that in the next several years, there could be at some point a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, which I don't think Taiwan is like a major, major battery producer, but China is. And so, what is the US response to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan? I think nobody- I think we have like strategic ambiguity on it. We're not like saying what it is. And it may be that we're going to like decouple aspects of our economy from China. And what will China do as a response? Will they withhold sort of the goods that they're producing? Because they might say, well, no batteries for you. And so, if all of Chinese battery production was withheld from the US market, that could cause some problems. And so, it is important that either the US or allies are kind of- our allies, preferably not in East Asia where they might be susceptible to Chinese embargoes or whatever, where we're able to sort of get them and have like full freedom of action despite like any threats that we might face from sort of secondary effects from sort of a miscalculation to invade Taiwan. And I think, also, like if we kind of prepare for that and kind of have the supply chain in place, that makes the sort of initial miscalculation less likely. Like, it makes war less likely if they don't think that- if the Chinese don't think that that's like a source of leverage that they can use against the US to sort of force us to like accept a takeover of Taiwan.
Eric Jorgenson: And Ethan, I know that was kind of part of your- you're hearing that often as part of the motivation for people, like not just the manufacturing capacity, but the entire supply chain to really reduce the risk factors of like sole sourcing some of these things from places that our relationships may change, too. I think the first time we met, you described yourself as wanting to start the Standard Oil of batteries. So I want to give you a chance to sort of fully explain that analogy because I think it's a powerful one.
Ethan Loosbrock: Yeah, I mean, so I guess the comparison is like I think batteries are sort of in the same place now that the early oil industry was in in that oil started as this lighting fluid. So, people used it in kerosene lamps, and then like it found a use in cars and really exploded from there. And like a lot of the lessons that you could draw from the oil industry are also applicable today. So, there's all these crazy supply chain risks, whether geopolitical or just like supply demand mismatches. And so, the way this was typically solved or was solved in the oil industry was by vertically integrating. And so Standard Oil sort of went all the way up to drilling and producing their own oil and refining it and distributing it and marketing it. And so, you see like some players already starting in the battery industry. So notably like CATL, it's a Chinese company that has about a third of the lithium ion battery market today, has started to do some of this. And just to basically like smooth out some of these challenges. If you're producing cathodes yourself or if you're doing lithium refining yourself, then you're not going to be subject to like crazy price swings and like limit your production that way. And so all of these like upstream holdup problems or like supply chain shocks just end up manifesting at the cell level because that's typically where like automakers or consumer electronics or most customers are buying. And so, if you can have a steady stream of cells, then you can take huge percentages of the market just by having that available.
Eric Jorgenson: So Ouros wants to go- the final vision is sort of like all the way from raw materials to production and sales of finished cells?
Ethan Loosbrock: Yep. Ideally, yes.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. At all different kinds of formats, like anything from personal electronics up to cars, homes, grid batteries, contact lenses, which is a new one I didn't know about before.
Ethan Loosbrock: Yeah, I mean, I think like there's certain like tradeoffs with some of the battery chemistry. So, we talked about LFP and NMC today, and they're good for different things. But if you can make a chemistry that's better on all metrics, on cost and energy density and power density, then there's no real reason that you would want to use other chemistries. And then I think the raw materials question is sort of a little bit up in the air mainly because of the recycling factor. So if you can- there will obviously be mining going in the near future. But it's possible that at some point, that just like stops being a thing at any sort of scale. And so yeah, that's one difference maybe between the battery industry and oil is you can't really reuse your petroleum. But yeah, that's like sort of the-
Eric Jorgenson: That's really the problem, isn't it?
Ethan Loosbrock: Yeah, it is, right. But yeah, that's like sort of like the full scale of this vision is like- and even, there's even like other underrated aspects of like potential outcomes. So, it's possible that in the future, you would- batteries become so cheap that you just like you don't end up buying them, you just like take a lease for your battery, or you have like a subscription plan for batteries. And then you send it back, and then they refresh it, and then send it back, you buy it again or something or lease it again.
Eric Jorgenson: And what's the sort of stage process for where we are now to sort of getting to that? What do you need from me, from Eli, from everybody listening to like get there in the near term? Because I think Eli's point was well made, like let's hurry, like for a bunch of reasons, not just sequential, but like how good life gets on the other side of this. Like, there's a lot to be gained by getting this thing commercialized and scaled and distributed as quickly as we can. He's a little life changing, technological improvement. And the sooner we can all sort of put our shoulders against it and make it happen, the better everybody's life is going to get.
Ethan Loosbrock: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think, for us, specifically, we're fundraising now. That's taking up a lot of my time. We're going to try to bring on some guys I know that are sort of world class and their specialties that I think could really accelerate the development of a like commercial product, not just like lab scale sort of invention. And so, I think the sooner we can get to a product, the better, and definitely financing helps with that. I think people being aware of like the potential in some of these applications and industries is always a good thing as well. And just there are certain aspects of like dispelling uncertainty. So like I think for the aerospace industry, like the sort of status quo or where people are thinking today is like they're not really sure what the future propulsion could be because not all of them are really aware of like the potential high side of where batteries could go. And so, there's a lot of like hybrid or like sustainable, sustainable petroleum or like hydrogen type systems being talked about, but I think if they're presented with a good enough battery, I think it just makes the most sense for those types of systems as well. So yeah, I think those are a few of the ways that we could move a little faster.
Eric Jorgenson: That's partly why I was really excited to see Eli sort of bring his credibility and audience and syndicate to bear on this because I think your words carry a lot of weight, Eli, and where you choose to focus and the things that you choose to highlight is important and impactful on the future, really like helps bring a lot of attention to it. So there's a lot of scuttlebutt that happened once your syndicate started. And I thought it was really exciting. And it's just fun to find something that has this kind of potential to rally around.
Eli Dourado: Yeah, absolutely. Like, what I like to invest in is stuff that will change the world if it works. And then, I like to go for the home runs. And that's exactly what I think this is. So, if we can get 10x the battery density, that's just a completely different world. And it's super exciting to be along for even part of the ride.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, that's how I feel too. Ethan, I appreciate you picking this up. And I feel like you're a man on a quest. And it's really fun to be cheering for you and rooting for you alongside everybody else. And I hope that the army got a little bigger today with people understanding sort of what we're going after and what can happen if you accomplish what you think you can, what we all know you can. Let’s manifest.
Ethan Loosbrock: Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, and I really appreciate you guys believing in the mission here. And we're going to do you guys proud, so we're going to get this to market as fast as possible.