So, anyone here about this company? Or is it another money grab on the battery hype train?
"Lyten produces 3D Graphene – a new decarbonization supermaterial that enables Net Zero without compromise."
lyten.com
I had not heard of Lyten specifically but several universities and companies have been exploring sulfur in batteries.
Are they another 'all hype' battery company? To some degree yes, but they do seem to be further along than some of the others.
All of these battery startup companies begin with a technology idea that has some theoretical advantages but also a bunch of disadvantages. They then spend several years doing lab work to get around the disadvantages and optimize the advantages. In this phase, they are trying to overcome basic scientific problems and many of them seem to never get past them.
If technology gets far enough along to address a market (maybe a niche market), the company will either start licensing the technology or start a small production line itself. It appears Lyten is starting its own production line so that is a good indication their technology is well along. Now they are facing big engineering and business challenges to scale from a lab process to a production process.
If they can get enough capital, they might succeed and eventually turn profitable, but the engineering problems and competitive forces can still stop them cold. Keep in mind that they are competing with the established lithium-ion industry which is already profitable and constantly improving. What it means to be competitive is an ever-moving target.
For all of these battery start-ups, my hope is greater than my expectations. We need new battery technologies to complement and maybe even replace the existing ones, so I really
hope companies like Lyten become a wild success. Unfortunately, starting a battery company is brutal in both the technology and business realms so a reasonable
expectation is that most of these companies will ultimately fail.
The fact that so many of them are able to stay around as long as they do is a testament to how desperate the world is for better batteries. If there wasn't such a huge desire for better batteries, many of these companies would not be able to get the funding to keep going.
