{"id":38022,"date":"2022-12-11T09:03:45","date_gmt":"2022-12-11T14:03:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=38022"},"modified":"2022-12-11T09:03:45","modified_gmt":"2022-12-11T14:03:45","slug":"porsche-electric-plane-batteries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=38022","title":{"rendered":"Porsche, World Fund join $63M bet on batteries for electric planes – Autoblog"},"content":{"rendered":"

To help electric planes take off, German battery<\/a> company Customcells says it landed about $63 million (\u20ac60 million) in Series A funding from Porsche and several climate-tech investors.<\/p>\n

World Fund, a one-year-old venture firm that backs European climate startups<\/a>, led the deal. Abacon Capital and Vsquared Ventures also chipped in.<\/p>\n

Customcells develops and recycles high-performance lithium-ion batteries that power products like cars, medical equipment and fossil fuel development (despite its stated decarbonization goals). The company also makes batteries for high-heat environments<\/a> north of 122 degrees F. For this funding round, Customcells has a specific aim in mind: accelerating its push into “e-aviation” as well as its expansion outside of Germany and into the U.S. and Asia.<\/p>\n

There’s no question that air travel is a serious climate change<\/a> driver. Still, the sector is a long ways from decarbonization. A 2020 paper<\/a> from researchers at Manchester Metropolitan University, NOAA and Oxford found that aviation represents 3.5% of all human activities that drive climate change, per NOAA<\/a>. Air travel is almost completely reliant on kerosene, which spews greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide) and poisons folks with lead<\/a> when it’s burned.<\/p>\n

An alternative to this mess could be all-electric aircraft. Small electric planes are <\/span>already<\/a> feasible<\/a>, yet <\/span>researchers say<\/a> batteries today are far <\/span>too heavy<\/a> to power larger planes on their own. The battery-weight challenge explains why some aviation startups are instead exploring alternative fuels<\/a>, including hydrogen<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

World Fund partner Daria Saharova called decarbonizing air travel “a huge uphill battle,” but argued in a prepared statement that the potential upsides were worth it. The startup’s chief executive, Dirk Abendroth, dubbed aviation the “next great decarbonisation challenge” in a separate statement on the new round.<\/p>\n

Customcells has attracted more than just investors. Its current customers include small jet maker Lilium<\/a> as well as “over half of Germany\u2019s major automotive companies,” a spokesperson for the startup told TechCrunch. They declined to share names, citing NDAs, but we already know Porsche is among them<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Can we trust capitalism to solve climate change?<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To help electric planes take off, German battery company Customcells says it landed about $63 million (\u20ac60 million) in Series A funding from Porsche and several climate-tech investors. World Fund, a one-year-old venture firm that backs European climate startups, led the deal. Abacon Capital and Vsquared Ventures also chipped in. Customcells develops and recycles high-performance […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38023,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38022\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}