Tucson's Sion Power gets $75M to drive new EV battery tech

Tucson-based advanced battery maker Sion Power Corp. has won $75 million in funding from investors, including global battery manufacturer LG Energy Solution, to advance its proprietary lithium-metal battery cell technology for electric vehicles.

Other participants in the Series A venture-capital round include prior investor Euclidean Capital and a new investment from Hillspire LLC, the family investment office of former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Sion said.

The company says it will use the new capital to validate its Licerion battery technology, which uses compression in a lithium-metal battery to enhance safety, lifetime and recharging rates.

Tracy Kelley, Sion Power’s CEO, said every carmaker now has an EV strategy, with billions being invested in the market.

“Our technology is appealing because Licerion directly addresses the anxiety that consumers feel about finding chargers by delivering up to twice the energy as conventional lithium-ion,” Kelley said.

Sion is in the process of a major local expansion announced in late 2022, moving into a 111,400-square-foot building on South Country Club Road while keeping its existing headquarters on East Elvira Road.

The company says it plans to build a fully automated manufacturing line to produce high-quality, large format lithium-metal cells for testing and market development by automakers and cell manufacturers.

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Founded in Tucson in 1989, Sion spent decades trying to perfect a lithium-sulfur battery but later shifted its focus to more promising lithium-metal anode technology.

A 2020 spinoff of South Korean industrial conglomerate LG Corp., LG Energy Solution is one of the world’s biggest EV battery makers.

Last March, LG Energy Solution announced it would invest $5.5 billion to build a battery manufacturing complex in Queen Creek to make cylindrical batteries for EVs and lithium-iron phosphate, pouch-type batteries for energy storage systems. Construction is expected to start early this year with production startup planned sometime in 2025.

The company has made EV batteries at global plant sites including Michigan for automakers including General Motors, Ford, Toyota and Honda.

“This investment is a strategic decision to solidify our leadership in the development of next-generation technologies in the battery industry,” LG Energy Solution said of the Sion funding.