Sakuu Blog

Battery innovation trends and challenges in 2025: Reflections on the Advanced Automotive Battery Conference in Las Vegas

Sakuu Battery System Engineer Sukeerth Calastawad and Sakuu SVP of E-Mobility and Product Arwed Niestroj recently attended the Advanced Automotive Battery Conference (AABC) in Las Vegas — manning Sakuu’s information booth, attending talks and presentations, and networking with many of the event’s ~1500 attendees. 

Arwed Niestroj has presented at and participated in past AABC events, but felt the energy was decidedly elevated at the Las Vegas show and was impressed by the deep and broad bench of representation from the automotive and manufacturing industries, as well as chemical and materials innovators, scientists and researchers, analysts and business development consultants, energy specialists and startups. 

Arwed’s key takeaways from AABC shed light on battery manufacturing trends and challenges heading into 2025 and in the years to come.

“To truly capture profitability in the manufacturing and use of batteries (especially in automotive), significant cost reduction still has to be achieved,” he said.

Key enablers for that, which were widely discussed at the conference, include:

• Replacing wet-coated electrodes with dry-process electrodes for lower cost and lower waste (this is a pivotal capability of Sakuu’s Kavian platform)
• Embracing dry coating technology: “You will see dry coating everywhere at the end of the decade!” was a powerful refrain at the show
• Reducing cost for current collectors (like Sakuu’s inherently safe metal free cells enabled by dry-printing technology)
• Pursuing manufacture of anode-free Lithium-Metal cells (like Sakuu’s Cypress cell chemistry), not necessarily all solid state batteries (ASSBs).
• Eventually replacing Lithium with cheaper chemistries, like Sodium (which is also compatible with Sakuu’s Kavian process)

Arwed also noted that “the scaling of dry-process electrodes is still in its early stages. No company (other than Tesla) claims to have it running successfully at scale,” which reflects positively on Sakuu’s advanced position in dry-process production capability with Kavian technology and highlights its value to advancing automotive battery innovation and mass manufacture.

It is unsurprising then that Arwed reported strong interest from manufacturers at the show to “learn more about Sakuu and our dry-process technology, and to check in with our existing partners.”

If you’d like to hear more of Arwed’s insights, register for TechBlick’s online event Battery Materials: Next-Generation & Beyond Li-Ion Battery Technology for his “Reinventing manufacturing for better batteries” presentation on February 11 (TechBlick offers a 25% discount if you register with code: Speaker25%).