California Energy Commission awards Liminal $2.75 million grant
The California Energy Commission (CEC) has approved a $2.75 million grant for Liminal, a battery manufacturing intelligence company, to advance the assembly of its EchoStat platform from manual to mostly-automated factory-ready equipment.
EchoStat is an EV battery cell inspection system that uses ultrasound inspection and machine learning analytics to provide manufacturers with previously unavailable insights into battery quality, reliability and performance.
Andrew Hsieh, CEO of Liminal, says: “To power the global EV transition, battery production needs to expand by 20 percent annually, but challenges with battery reliability have created setbacks for automakers and battery companies.
“We specifically designed EchoStat to help manufacturers meet the growing production demand by providing data-backed insights to make their systems more intelligent and ensure the highest quality standards.”
The Realizing Accelerated Manufacturing and Production for Clean Energy Technologies (RAMP) award is part of the CEC’s Electric Program Investment Charge Program (EPIC) designed to support clean energy entrepreneurs in successfully advancing their emerging best-of-class innovative technology to the Low-Rate Initial Production (LRIP) stage.
David Hochschild, California Energy Commission Chair, praised innovators for keeping this work in California.
Hochschild says: “RAMP is really a visionary program. It is providing value, not just for our clean energy goals, but also ultimately for ratepayers because it is helping to drive down the cost of these technologies.”
Erik Stokes, Energy Research and Development Division deputy director at the California Energy Commission, says: “There is a huge opportunity to expand California’s market presence and impact in battery cell manufacturing, and we’re pleased to award Liminal this RAMP grant in order to accelerate their in-state manufacturing capability.
“We are confident that Liminal’s technology will help battery cell manufacturers around the world decrease time to market for new battery cells, accelerate the timeline for new battery cell production while positively impacting manufacturing cost and reliability.”
The award from the state comes on the heels of a Series A2 funding round Liminal secured for $17.5 million in February 2023.
The company has successfully completed multiple customer evaluations at a process development scale and is preparing to deploy its first factory inspection system with a major battery cell manufacturer.
