GM Ventures has invested $10 million in materials science company Forge Nano, which makes Atomic Armor, an innovative EV battery technology.
GM and Forge Nano
Capital investment into Forge Nano now exceeds $100 million; GM joins Volkswagen, LG, Hanwha, and Mitsui Kinzoku as shareholders.
GM and Forge Nano have also signed a strategic partnership agreement to use Forge Nano’s proprietary Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) technology, Atomic Armor, to develop thin-film coatings to enhance GM’s cathode active materials. Forge Nano will build prototype lithium-ion battery cells at its Colorado headquarters to improve GM’s EV battery performance and lifespan.
Atomic Armor is a surface coating that, when applied to an EV battery, prevents corrosion, strengthens properties, and improves performance. It results in a 20% increase in range and gives the EV battery the ability to fast charge in 10 minutes.
Forge Nano says it plans to use the money to continue to expand its battery material coating business, which includes in-house active material coating services, external equipment sales, and production of Atomic Armor-powered battery cells. It will also expand its footprint in semiconductors.
Forge Battery is currently fitting out a 277,000-square-foot space (pictured above) that it’s leased in Morrisville, North Carolina, where it will manufacture ALD-enabled, high-performance (307 Wh/kg) NMC/Si-G 21700 Li-ion cells. (Forge Battery also has a newly constructed gigafactory in Raleigh, where it’s begun to produce and ship 300 Wh/kg Atomic Armor-powered lithium-ion prototype cells.)
Forge Battery told us its target market includes heavy trucking, offroad vehicles, motorcycles, and defense.
The Morrisville site will have a 1 GWh per year production capability underway in 2026 and will grow to 3 GWh per year by 2029 once it gets the power it needs from utility Duke Energy. Forge Battery’s supply chain will initially be 90% US-sourced, with the goal of a 100% US supply chain by project completion. (The 10% isn’t yet made in the US; that’s sourced from South Korea.)
The US Department of Energy recently awarded Forge Battery $100 million as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and it will use that money to expand its production capacity to 3 GWh/year. When we visited the vast space, which will be made even larger with the new funding, preparations were underway for a press conference the next day where Governor Roy Cooper (D-NC) and US Department of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm were going to announce the funding officially.
That event had to be canceled due to Hurricane Helene’s impending arrival. We all left early, and at the time, none of us knew how devastating the damage would be to the western part of the state.
When people ask what the Biden administration has been up to over the last few years, Forge Battery is a great example of the mind-blowing domestic clean energy and EV growth the federal government (and the state of North Carolina) is supporting. It’s mind-boggling to think that all of this has happened in just a few short years. Good policy gets real-world results, and it was great to see it in person.
Forge Nano and Forge Battery are creating better-performing EV batteries. These should encourage more people to adopt EVs. They’re also creating direct and indirect jobs in North Carolina and elsewhere. And most importantly, the product they build encourages people to stop burning fossil fuels that warm the earth with emissions and create ever more intense hurricanes like Helene that devastate communities and lives.
If you are in a position to help, the state’s North Carolina Disaster Relief Fund is accepting donations to support the communities most impacted.
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True to Lamborghini’s legacy of speed and excess, the first battery-electric vehicle to wear the raging bull is also the fastest of its kind. Only this time, the badge isn’t on a car — it’s on a personal watercraft. Meet the all-new Seabob SE63 jet sled.
Co-developed with the Italian supercar brand, the Lamborghini-badged Seabob SE63 features a more powerful jet propulsion system than any of the company’s existing personal jet sleds, and is fitted with a carbon fiber motor shaft as a further nod to the Italian luxury brand’s high-performance heritage.
The riding experience is not just ‘a bit faster’, but thrillingly intense and unrestrained. Acceleration off the start line delivers an immediate adrenaline rush. Thrust, agility, top speed: everything is designed for maximum performance and pure emotion.
The new SE63 backs up those claims with a 6.3 kW (~8.5 hp) electric motor. And, while that hardly makes it a supercar, in the world of ePWCs, it’s enough to make the SE63 a monster. The SE63 also features a bigger, more energy-dense battery than other Seabobs, a combination good for up to 60 minutes of go-fast, water-based fun.
Seabob SE63 Lamborghini
The SE63 can recharge its batteries with a standard power outlet in just 1.5 hours, and be back on the water for even more fun in the sun.
The Seabob SE63 made its debut earlier this week at the Cannes Yachting Festival. Production is set to begin in early 2026, meaning you’ll be able to get yours just in time for the summer 2026 beach season. Prices have yet to be announced – but, like any Lamborghini product, if you have to ask you probably can’t afford it.
Check out the world premier of the Seabob SE63 for Automobili Lamborghini (the sled’s official name) in the video, below, then let us know what you think of the brand’s first BEV in the comments.
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A duo of Tesla shareholder-influencers tried to complete Elon Musk’s coast-to-coast self-driving ride that he claimed Tesla would be able to do in 2017 and they crashed before making it about 60 miles.
In 2016, Elon Musk infamously said that Tesla would complete a fully self-driving coast-to-coast drive between Los Angeles and New York by the end of 2017.
The idea was to livestream or film a full unedited drive coast-to-coast with the vehicle driving itself at all times.
We are in 2025 and Tesla never made that drive.
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Despite the many missed autonomous driving goals, many Tesla shareholders believe that the company is on the verge of delivering unsupervised self-driving following the rollout of its ‘Robotaxi’ fleet in Austin, which requires supervision from Tesla employees inside the vehicles, and improvements to its “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) systems inside consumer vehicles, which is still only a level 2 driver assist system that requires driver attention at all times as per Tesla.
Two of these Tesla shareholders and online influencers attempted to undertake a coast-to-coast drive between San Diego, CA, and Jacksonville, FL, in a Tesla Model Y equipped with the latest FSD software update.
They didn’t make it out of California without crashing into easily avoidable road debris that badly damaged the Tesla Model Y:
In the video, you can see that the driver doesn’t have his hands on the steering wheel. The passenger spots the debris way ahead of time. There was plenty of time to react, but the driver didn’t get his hands on the steering wheel until the last second.
In a follow-up video, the two Tesla influencers confirmed that the Model Y had a broken sway bar bracket and damaged suspension components. The vehicle is also throwing out a lot of warnings.
They made it about 2.5% of the planned trip on Tesla FSD v13.9 before crashing the vehicle.
Electrek’s Take
Tesla shareholders used to discuss this somewhat rationally back in the day, but now that Tesla’s EV business is in decline and the stock price depends entirely on the self-driving and robot promises, they no longer do.
I recall when Musk himself used to say that when you reach 99% self-driving, it is when the “march of the 9s” begins, and you must achieve 99.999999999% autonomy to have a truly useful self-driving system. He admitted that this is the most challenging part as the real-world is unpredictable and hard to simulate – throwing a lot of challenging scenario at you, such as debris on the road.
That’s where Tesla is right now. The hard part has just started. And there’s no telling how long it will take to get there. If someone is telling you that they know, they are lying. I don’t know. My best estimate is approximately 2-3 years and a new hardware suite.
However, competition, mainly Waymo, began its own “march of the 9s” about five years ago.
Tesla is still years behind, and something like this drive by these two Tesla influencers proves it.
I was actually in a similar accident in a Tesla Model 3 back in 2020. I rented a Model 3 on Turo for a trip to Las Vegas from Los Angeles.
I ended up driving over a blown-out truck tire in the middle of the road like this. I was Autopilot, but I don’t know if the car saw it. I definitely saw it, but it was a bit late as I was following a truck that just drove over it. I had probably less than 2 seconds to react. I applied the brakes, but my choices were driving into a ditch on the right or into a car in the left lane.
I managed to reduce the force of the impact with the braking, but the vehicle jumped a bit like in this video. There wasn’t really any damage to the front, but the bottom cover was flapping down. I taped it together at the next gas station and I was able to continue the trip without much issue.
However, after returning it to the Turo owner and having the suspension damage evaluated by Tesla, the repair job was estimated to be roughly $10,000. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a similar situation with this accident.
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Chrysler parent company Stellantis is calling its new, Intelligent Battery Integrated System (IBIS) system a breakthrough technology that will make future EVs lighter, more efficient, and quicker. Now, that “breakthrough” tech is now moving from concept to reality.
Co-developed with Saft, Sherpa Engineering, Université Paris-Saclay, and Institut Lafayette, Stellantis’ IBIS embeds the charger and inverter functions directly into the battery pack, an integration that results in reduced design complexity, interior space savings, and lifetime easier maintenance.
That improved efficiency carries on to the battery’s second life, too. IBIS facilitates the reuse of electric vehicle batteries in second-life battery energy storage systems (BESS) applications by reducing the need for extensive (and expensive) reconditioning.
up to 10% energy efficiency improvement (WLTC cycle) and 15% power gain (172 kW vs. 150 kW) with the same battery size
reduces vehicle weight by ~40 kg and frees up to 17 liters of volume, enabling better aerodynamics and design flexibility
early results show a 15% reduction in charging time (e.g., from 7 to 6 hours on a 7 kW AC charger), along with 10% energy savings
easier servicing and enhanced potential for second-life battery reuse in both automotive and stationary applications
Those benefits stem from the fact that EVs spend a lot of time and energy converting Alternating Current (AC) to Direct Current (DC) and back again with the – that’s true whether we’re talking about a L2 home charger or energy harvested from regenerative braking. Doing away with that process and the hardware that goes along with it could unlocks significant weight and efficiency benefits, with some estimates indicating that an IBIS car could weigh in at 40 kg less than a conventionally-equipped BEV, while still offering similar range and performance.
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