{"id":19439,"date":"2026-03-12T10:28:57","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T10:28:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/12\/us-battery-industry\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T10:28:57","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T10:28:57","slug":"us-battery-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/12\/us-battery-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"Brutal times for the US battery industry"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Just a few years ago, the battery industry was hot, hot, hot. There was a seemingly infinite number of companies popping up, with shiny new chemistries and massive fundraising rounds. My biggest problem was sifting through the pile to pick the most exciting news to cover.<\/p>\n

That tide has turned, and in 2026, what seems to be in unlimited supply isn\u2019t battery success stories but stumbles or straight-up implosions. Companies are failing, investors are pulling back, and batteries, especially for EVs, aren\u2019t looking so hot anymore. On Monday, Steve Levine at The Information<\/em> (paywalled link) reported<\/a> that 24M Technologies, a battery company founded in 2010, was shutting down and would auction off its property.<\/p>\n

The company itself has been silent, but this is the latest in a string of bad signs, and it\u2019s a big one\u2014at one point 24M was worth over $1 billion, and the company\u2019s innovations could have worked with existing technology. So where does that leave the battery industry?<\/p>\n

Many buzzy battery startups in recent years have been trying to sell some new, innovative chemistry to compete with lithium-ion batteries, the status quo that powers phones, laptops, electric vehicles, and even grid storage arrays today. Think sodium-ion batteries and solid-state cells.<\/p>\n

24M wasn\u2019t trying to sell a departure from lithium-ion but improvements that could work with the tech. One of the company\u2019s major innovations was its manufacturing process, which involved essentially smearing materials onto sheets of metal to form the electrodes, a simpler and potentially cheaper technique than the standard one.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The layers in the company\u2019s batteries were thicker, which cut down on some of the inactive materials in cells and improved the energy density. That allows more energy to be stored in a smaller package, boosting the range of EVs\u2014the company famously had a goal of a 1,000-mile battery<\/a> (about 1,600 kilometers).<\/p>\n

We\u2019re still thin on details of what exactly went down at 24M and what comes next for its tech. The company didn\u2019t get back to my questions sent to the official press email, and nobody picked up the phone when I called. 24M cofounder and MIT professor Yet-Ming Chiang declined to speak on the record.<\/p>\n

For those who have been closely following the battery industry, more bad news isn\u2019t too surprising. It feels as if everyone is short on money these days, and as purse strings tighten, there\u2019s less interest in novel ideas. \u201cIt just feels like there\u2019s not a lot of appetite for innovation,\u201d says Kara Rodby, a technical principal at Volta Energy Technologies, a venture capital firm that focuses on the energy storage industry.<\/p>\n

Natron Energy, one of the leading sodium-ion startups in the US, shut down operations in September last year. Ample, an EV battery-swapping company<\/a>, filed for bankruptcy in December 2025.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

There were always going to be failures from the recent battery boom. Money was flowing to all sorts of companies, some pitching truly wild ideas. But what recent months have made clear is that the battery market is turning brutal, even for the relatively safe bets.<\/p>\n

Because 24M\u2019s technology was designed to work into existing lithium-ion chemistry, it could have been an attractive candidate for existing battery companies to license or even acquire. \u201cIt\u2019s a great example of something that should have been easier,\u201d Rodby says.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The gutting of major components of the Inflation Reduction Act, key legislation in the US that provided funding and incentives for batteries and EVs, certainly hasn\u2019t helped. The EV market in the US is cooling off, with automakers canceling EV models<\/a> and slashing factory plans<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There are bright spots. China\u2019s battery industry is thriving, and its battery and EV giants are looking ever more dominant. The market for stationary energy storage is also still seeing positive signs of growth, even in the US.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But overall, it\u2019s not looking great.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This article is from The Spark, <\/em>MIT Technology Review\u2019s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, <\/em>sign up here<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just a few years ago, the battery industry was hot, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[226],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19439\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}