business backgrounder | manufacturing
Battery Boom in Moses Lake
EV battery innovators put down roots in Central Washington .
Jacqueline Allison
Sila Nanotechnologies is one of three companies building plants in Moses Lake to make silicon components for electric vehicle batteries .
At A Glance
Sila Nanotechnologies selected Moses Lake to build its flagship factory , where the company will make its Titan Silicon powder for electric vehicles . The silicon powder replaces the graphite found in nearly all other lithium-ion batteries .
Sila ’ s product boosts the energy capacity of EV batteries and enables charging in under 10 minutes . At full capacity , the Moses Lake factory will employ 500 and power more than one million EVs a year .
Clean , affordable hydropower and a quality workforce and education system brought the company to Moses Lake .
Sila has partnered with Big Bend Community College and the Columbia Basin Technical Skills Center to build a pool of potential workers .
Sila is targeting mid-2025 to start commercial production of Titan Silicon .
Gene Berdichevsky , co-founder and CEO of Sila Nanotechnologies , holds a jar of the company ’ s Titan silicon powder . The product increases the energy density of EV batteries by more than 20 %.
MOSES LAKE — The future of electric vehicles is in Moses Lake .
The city of 26,000 has quickly become an epicenter of the electric vehicle industry . New manufacturing plants are poised to improve EV batteries and bring hundreds of jobs to Grant County .
Alameda , California-based Sila Nanotechnologies broke ground last fall on a 600,000-square-foot factory in Moses Lake . The plant will produce Titan
“ Moses Lake , you guys are like the center of the universe . What is happening here ? It is amazing .”
— U . S . Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm during a visit to Moses Lake in February , reported by the Columbia Basin Herald
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