Prieto Battery approaches scale-up after landing Hercules EV deal

FORT COLLINS — After almost a decade of research into prototypes, Prieto Battery Inc. is pivoting towards getting its concept for the electric vehicle batteries of the near-future in trucks within the next few years.

The small Fort Collins outfit landed a deal to develop batteries for future pickup truck models developed by Hercules Electric Vehicles, a Detroit startup that’s looking to introduce all-electric heavy-duty consumer vehicles in 2022.

Prieto Battery and Hercules are working to develop and commercialize the existing battery technology to be used in Hercules trucks by 2025.

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The company was founded in 2009 by Amy Prieto, the current Chief Technology Officer and a chemistry professor at Colorado State University.

A new approach to batteries

The current generation of lithium-ion batteries commercialized in the 90s work by stacking lithium sheets on top of one another and using an electrolyte liquid to transfer power.

While the current design is relatively lightweight and suitable for consumer electronics, it presents a trade-off for electric vehicles: the charges and range are strong, but the charging speed is slow.

Prieto’s “3D” battery design claims to hold a lot of energy, but also charge and discharge at a far faster pace without generating the kind of heat that would need additional cooling apparatuses to control.

“Usually there’s a trade-off,” she said. “In one case, maybe store a lot of energy, but the battery will be really slow, or be able to charge really fast, but not store a lot of energy. We really wanted to eliminate that trade-off and get the best of both.”

Full shift to EVs will take time

That amounts to the fundamental issue facing electric carmakers today: changing consumer behavior. At the moment, gas-powered cars are powered by energy-dense substances and can be refueled in a matter of minutes back to its full range, but it releases carbon dioxide and other pollutants.

Although EVs could produce the same range as a regular car with a full tank without emissions, asking drivers to give up the convenience of refilling their tanks and wait longer for their batteries to charge is a behavioral economics problem.

“You have to have a non-compromise vehicle,” Prieto Battery CEO Mike Rosenberg said. “The vehicle has to cost the same amount as the internal combustion engine vehicle, but it also has to have the same attributes. Otherwise, the consumers won’t buy it.”

Rosenberg said the Prieto battery can address those problems found in the current range of electric cars at scale quicker than legacy automakers through its partnership with Hercules, a fellow startup.

But Prieto is more cautious, saying that leaps and bounds in electrifying vehicles and the broader power grid are unlikely because a one-size-fits-all approach won’t work in either scenario.

She also said pushing technology out to commercialization too quickly is bound to backfire, noting that the trend of hype and later failure has been common in climate change-focused industries.

A recent notable example is Nikola Corp. (Nasdaq: NKLA), which purported to produce freight trucks powered by hydrogen.

The company’s stock rose to near $80 per share in June and had orders from Anheuser-Busch Companies LLC before a short-seller research fund posted a report last month accusing the company of multiple fraudulent claims, including rolling a motorless truck down a sloped road and claiming the truck was powered by a hydrogen motor.

Nikola’s founder Trevor Milton later resigned after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice reportedly began investigations.

Prieto Battery was founded in 2009, and Amy Prieto said that time has been used to lay the groundwork for an effective prototype before others put it into large-scale production.

“I think that the real successes will come from companies that have been methodical and careful and playing the long game in terms of actually developing good technology,” she said,