The EV battery race is entering a new phase where chemistry innovation and commercialization speed must advance together. After years of breakthroughs in solid-state materials, the question is no longer if the technology works but how quickly it can reach mass production.
Factorial’s focus is to prove solid-state in the real world. Our cells have already been demonstrated on pavement through a Mercedes-Benz long-distance road test from Stuttgart to Malmö, where a lightly modified EQS test vehicle achieved more than 1,200 kilometers on a single charge. In parallel, we continue to progress our work with Stellantis as part of our broader OEM validation efforts.
The industry is converging to bring this technology to market before 2030. Leading OEMs such as Stellantis, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, BMW, and Honda are deepening their solid-state development partnerships, while players like BYD are deepening collaborations of their own. With pack prices dropping 20% in 2024 to $115 per kilowatt-hour [1], side-by-side collaborations have become the critical accelerant for translating proven chemistry into scalable, market-ready solutions.
Why Partnerships Outperform Going At It Alone
In deep-tech hardware, scale no longer requires owning every stage of production. A capital-light model that leverages diversified partnerships can accelerate manufacturing readiness without the burden of gigafactory-scale investment. By sharing infrastructure and expertise, companies can convert strategic collaboration into faster validation, lower risk, and more efficient growth.
But the real advantage is speed. Cross-firm development, shared production data and parallel workstreams can significantly compress development timelines by enabling faster feedback between design, testing, and manufacturing. This dynamic is well established in industries like semiconductors, where close collaboration between designers and foundries such as TSMC has accelerated iteration through continuous production-informed learning [2].
If production scales, costs fall and energy density rises faster, creating the kind of compounding competitive advantage that RMI research shows can mean the difference between reaching cost parity in 2028 versus 2032[3]. That timeline gap determines market leadership.
OEM partnerships also open integration pipelines and accelerate the rigorous automotive qualification process. This mirrors what happened with 5G and Wi-Fi, where cross-industry consortia standardized technology to speed mass adoption. With solid-state chemistry now validated, progress depends on how efficiently it can be integrated into vehicle platforms. Chemistry and commercialization are advancing in tandem, shortening the time from lab innovation to on-road performance.
Factorial + Stellantis: The Blueprint
Our partnership with Stellantis illustrates exactly how this works in practice. What began as a 2021 joint development agreement evolved into full co-development to integrate cells into an optimized pack design to integrate into the vehicle. By 2024, Stellantis announced a demo program starting to come online on its STLA Large platform, the architecture underpinning vehicles like the Dodge Charger Daytona. This is a first step that enables optimized integration and performance validation in real automotive applications.
The technical progress has been substantial. We’ve technically verified 77Ah FEST cells at 375 Wh/kg with 15–90% charge in less than 20 minutes, 4C high power discharge capability, and operation from −30°C to 45°C. These specifications are progressing toward full automotive qualification, but what matters most is what they enable: fast charging and cold-weather operability that move solid-state from lab curiosity to ICE-equivalent usability. Joint workstreams in pack architecture ensure these performance gains extend beyond chemistry into total system efficiency.
What Collaboration Unlocks: The Portfolio Approach
When OEMs leverage multi-partner networks they create a wider portfolio of learning with more “shots on goal” at lower shared cost, much like pharmaceutical development. In drug R&D, companies often advance multiple candidates and workstreams in parallel rather than relying on a single sequential pathway. Industry analyses show that streamlined and parallelized preclinical development processes can reduce timelines to first-in-human trials by 40% [4], illustrating how coordinated, simultaneous efforts accelerate progress. If one integration path encounters an unexpected hurdle, parallel workstreams with other partners maintain momentum.
Cell and materials joint ventures also reduce volatility exposure and anchor capacity at scale. GM’s Ultium cells partnership with LG Energy Solution demonstrates how vertical integration through alliances can secure supply while sharing the capital burden. Likewise, Factorial’s announced collaboration with POSCO Future M aligns process innovation with advanced material expertise to accelerate solid-state commercialization and strengthen long-term supply resilience. For OEMs, this approach can help secure access to high-quality materials at more predictable prices in volatile markets.
Perhaps most importantly, shared roadmaps accelerate ecosystem adoption. When multiple major OEMs adopt similar solid-state architectures, charging infrastructure providers, service networks, and recyclers can invest confidently in supporting the technology. This is the standard-setting power that the 3GPP consortium wielded in telecommunications.
Lessons from Platform Shifts
The Wintel alliance created the PC standard through coordinated hardware-software roadmaps that scaled exponentially through the 1990s and 2000s. The Compaq-Intel-Microsoft tri-party co-development of the 386 architecture validated a new processor generation and helped compatible manufacturers leapfrog incumbents through synchronized milestones. More recently, NVIDIA’s network of hardware and software co-developers turned GPUs into the default platform for AI workloads. Factorial’s chemistry-vehicle integration is aimed to define a similar reference platform for solid-state vehicles.
Factorial’s partnerships with several global OEMs are aimed to buildsimilar ecosystem momentum across global vehicle platforms. When leading automakers standardize on similar technology, they create the critical mass that drives supply chain investment and manufacturing scale.
Why Speed Wins Now
The market environment has fundamentally shifted. The 20% price drop in 2024 [5] – the biggest since 2017 – came from relentless manufacturing scale and supply chain optimization, not a single breakthrough. Near-term softness in EV demand is often labeled an EV slowdown, but it is increasingly a lithium-ion slowdown. Consumers want more range, faster charging, and lower costs, and incremental lithium-ion improvements are no longer enough. The market now punishes slow execution and rewards validated performance and manufacturable paths to the next generation.
Wide 2030 cost projections, ranging from $20–$750/kWh per ScienceDirect analysis, highlight that demonstrated execution and qualification now outweigh laboratory results. Investors and OEMs want validation by automotive standard, manufacturing line data, and clear paths to automotive qualification. Partnership structures provide this proof of manufacturability.
What “Good” Looks Like: Factorial’s Model
The most effective battery partnerships share three characteristics. First, aligned B-sample, pack, demo, and start-of-production milestones with joint KPI ownership – overcome the integration gaps that plague serial development models. Second, shared validation data across materials, cell, pack, and vehicle levels ensure both partners learn and iterate concurrently rather than in sequence. Third, a focus on manufacturability with existing production lines, secured supply relationships, and clear cost-down pathways tied to production scale means faster ramp and lower retooling costs.
Building the Solid-State Ecosystem
The race isn’t to invent the next chemistry in isolation – it’s to industrialize breakthrough technology globally. Factorial’s progress with our partners demonstrates that collaborative approaches can deliver on next-generation battery promises at the speed and scale the market demands. As the market matures, the technologies that win will be those that prove real-world performance, industrial readiness, and a credible commercialization path. That is what strategic collaboration makes possible.
We’re actively building out the solid-state value chain and invite collaboration with materials suppliers, system integrators, and mobility leaders ready to move beyond laboratory milestones. The solid-state future is being built right now, one partnership at a time.
[1] https://about.bnef.com/insights/commodities/lithium-ion-battery-pack-prices-see-largest-drop-since-2017-falling-to-115-per-kilowatt-hour-bloombergnef/
[2] https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/apple-tsmc-the-partnership-that-built
[3] https://rmi.org/wp-content/uploads/dlm_uploads/2023/12/xchange_batteries_the_battery_domino_effect.pdf
[4] https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/life-sciences/our-insights/fast-to-first-in-human-getting-new-medicines-to-patients-more-quickly
[5] https://about.bnef.com/insights/commodities/lithium-ion-battery-pack-prices-see-largest-drop-since-2017-falling-to-115-per-kilowatt-hour-bloombergnef/
