TaiSan, the UK company pioneering quasi-solid-state sodium batteries for the automotive industry, today announces the raise of £1.3 million, investment which will accelerate development of its game-changing battery electric vehicle (BEV) technology.

Led by EIT InnoEnergy and TSP Ventures and followed by Heartfelt VC and Exergon, TaiSan’s
pre-seed round is backed by Europe’s leading strategic e-mobility funds. Co-funded by the European Union, EIT InnoEnergy has investment links to both leading automotive OEMs and battery gigafactories. Heartfelt VC is also linked to a leading automotive OEM.

Adoption of sodium-ion chemistry is widely regarded as one of the next major BEV shifts, offering significant cost, sustainability, and safety benefits vs lithium-ion, with the global market expected to rapidly grow and be worth £1 billion by 2028¹ reaching a capacity of 186GWh/year in 2030².

Launched in 2022 with the objective of realising an industry disrupting increase in the energy density of sodium batteries for BEVs, TaiSan has developed its own proprietary, innovative electrolyte and anode materials. The company’s Gen 1.0 product has resulted comparable volumetric and gravimetric battery energy density to an automotive lithium-ion, but with a projected 20 percent cost saving over the most common chemistry for BEV batteries. TaiSan technology is based on sustainable and abundant, environmentally friendly materials across the board (i.e., no lithium, nickel, cobalt and copper metals are used).

Its advanced technology offers industry-standard ionic conductivity to enable fast-charging, reduction of dendrite growth that usually limits battery cycle life, high capacity anode, and with no leakage possible, no risk of fire. The IP is designed as a ‘drop-in’ solution to existing lithium-ion battery manufacturing facilities to scale faster with the lower barrier to the market.

TaiSan has already signed a number of MOUs with automotive manufacturers from 7 different countries. The latest funding will help the company to progress with agreed customers milestones and advance the development of the company’s innovative electrolyte and anode materials.

“On behalf of our entire team, I am delighted to announce the completion of this pre-seed fund raise and would like to thank our expert strategic investors for their vision and full support. Our quasi-solid-state sodium battery offers significant cost, sustainability, and safety benefits for the BEV industry. TaiSan’s novel electrolyte and anode innovations will bring this chemistry to the next level – batteries becoming smaller, lighter, with best-in-class energy density, and major cost savings too. Our new investment will allow us to ramp-up development and we will be announcing some game-changing results in the very near future. Watch this space.”

Over the last two years, TaiSan has received close to a total of £500,000 in funding by multiple UK Government and Research organisations, including the Department for Transport (DfT), The Faraday Institution, Innovate UK, Advanced Propulsion Centre, Royal Academy of Engineering and Catapult Connected Places. In October 2023, TaiSan was recognised with the award of “Best Growth Potential” by Professor Sarah Sharples (Chief Scientific Advisor to DfT).

The TaiSan team is made up of experienced battery scientists and electrochemists, formerly of MIT, Imperial College, Jaguar Land Rover and The Faraday Institution organisations. Founder Sanzhar Taizhan has received multiple UK battery awards and is a former JLR battery engineer. He also became honouree of the Forbes Kazakhstan 30 under 30, after founding and leading two UK’s Warwick University technical teams that reached finals and placed “top 3” worldwide at Hyperloop contests run by Elon Musk’s SpaceX and The Boring Company.