{"id":137764,"date":"2026-03-26T16:50:51","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T19:50:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ces.einnews.com\/article\/901934439\/CSQuDAtHr60nq5CG"},"modified":"2026-03-26T16:50:51","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T19:50:51","slug":"as-electric-vehicles-lose-their-juice-mass-battery-startups-are-being-hit-hard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/2026\/03\/26\/as-electric-vehicles-lose-their-juice-mass-battery-startups-are-being-hit-hard\/","title":{"rendered":"As electric vehicles lose their juice, Mass. battery startups are being hit hard"},"content":{"rendered":"

SES and 24M are ending projects, pivoting factories, and laying off staff as battery market shifts from cars to drones.<\/h2>\n
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\"The
The slowdown in the electric vehicle market is hitting local battery developers working on cutting-edge power storage technologies<\/span>Lane Turner\/Globe Staff<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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The slowdown in the electric vehicle market is hitting local battery developers that are working on cutting-edge power storage technologies<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

SES AI in Woburn is ending projects to develop EV batteries and shifting <\/b>its focus to batteries for drones and energy storage systems. 24M Technologies in Cambridge conducted extensive layoffs this month and may shut down. And Factorial Energy in Billerica is newly emphasizing batteries for drones even as its car projects continue.<\/span><\/p>\n

The three companies combined have raised almost $1.4 billion of capital, according to data from research firm Pitchbook. SES and 24M emerged from research at MIT. Factorial\u2019s roots are also in the northeast, as founder, Siyu Huang, started her research at Cornell\u2019s chemistry department.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThere\u2019s no surprise that the EV market is slowing down and almost no automaker is investing in next-gen battery technology,\u201d Qichao Hu, SES founder and chief executive, told analysts earlier this month, after the company disclosed that joint projects it\u2019s running with car makers Honda and Hyundai would soon wind down. <\/b>\u201cNo one is investing in mass scale production of next-gen technology.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Amid the Trump administration\u2019s sharp turn against electric vehicles over the last 15 months, car makers have canceled billions of dollars of battery plant investments and taken massive write-offs. Honda last year said it was cutting spending on EV programs by more than $20 billion<\/a> as it canceled a $15 billion battery plant<\/a> in Canada. Ford<\/a>, Jeep-owner Stellantis<\/a>, and General Motors<\/a> have made similar cutbacks.<\/span><\/p>\n

The moves come as Trump and Republicans in Congress eliminated consumer subsidies for buying EVs and cut back government support for building clean tech manufacturing plants. At the same time, the administration has made plans to spend billions of dollars on drones for the military<\/a>, including bolstering US production of drone components and banning imports of Chinese products. That could open the door for American companies to supply the specialized, high-density batteries used in drones.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\"Technicians
Technicians work at a pilot factory run by Factorial Energy in Methuen.<\/span>TONY LUONG\/NYT<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

At SES, Hu argued that the car makers\u2019 cutbacks were not due to any technical shortfalls in SES\u2019s batteries, which use different materials than current EV batteries<\/a> and aim to hold more energy per pound. \u201cWe hit all the technical milestones,\u201d Hu said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Shares of SES, which had already plummeted more than 80 percent since the company went public in 2022, have dropped another 36 percent to less than $1.10 since announcing the end of its automaker trials on March 4.<\/span><\/p>\n

Analysts don\u2019t expect demand to revive unless the EV market picks up again. The end of the trials at SES \u201csignals an official exit of this segment until [the] EV market returns in the future,\u201d Deutsche Bank analyst Winnie Dong wrote in a report.<\/span><\/p>\n

At Factorial, the company has continued working with car makers while raising new funding<\/a> this month to develop batteries for drones and robots. Factorial, which plans to go public later this year<\/a>, said last year that a \u201clightly modified\u201d test vehicle from Mercedes powered by its batteries traveled about 750 miles on a single charge<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the entire industry working on new battery technologies has yet to prove it can produce cost-effective break throughs, according to UMass Lowell professor Frank Tredeau, who has worked on EV electronics for decades.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe companies that tried to make them grossly underestimated how hard it would be to make a good battery at a good price that will last and be reliable and affordable,\u201d Tredeau said. \u201cThey greatly underestimated what a challenge that was.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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A battery cell at a testing lab at the headquarters of Mercedes-Benz in Stuttgart, Germany.<\/span>FELIX SCHMITT\/NYT<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

And 24M has \u201ceffectively shut down,\u201d battery engineer Frank Fan posted<\/a> on LinkedIn last week, after widespread layoffs (Fan did not respond to a request for comment). Chief executive Naoki Ota, a pioneer who helped develop the first lithium ion batteries decades ago in Japan, did not respond to requests for comment but chief financial officer Richard Chleboski said the company was weighing its future. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c24M is considering all strategic and financial alternatives,\u201d Chleboski wrote in an email to the Globe.<\/span><\/p>\n

The 24M shutdown was reported<\/a> earlier by The Information.<\/span><\/p>\n

The startup\u2019s technology aimed to pack more energy in each battery cell at a lower cost<\/a>, while making the packs less likely to catch fire \u2014 a major downside of current lithium ion batteries<\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

As recently as January, 24M was showing off its high-density batteries for drones at the CES consumer electronics show<\/a> in Las Vegas.<\/span><\/p>\n

(Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the location of Factorial\u2019s headquarters.)<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

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Aaron Pressman can be reached at aaron.pressman@globe.com<\/a>. Follow him @ampressman<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

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… and Republicans in Congress eliminated consumer<\/span> subsidies for buying EVs and … , who has worked on EV electronics<\/span> for decades. \u00e2\u0080\u009cThe companies that tried … -density batteries for drones at the CES consumer electronics show<\/span> in Las Vegas. (Correction: An earlier …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-137764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137764\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}