The Electrochemistry Foundry: California Battery Innovation Hub
Project Update
This project started in September 2025. Initial tasks after agreement execution included standing up grant management operations and formally launching the project. Over the year, the team finalized the site lease, defined and ordered core pilot-line equipment, selected a general contractor through a competitive process for dry room construction and facility modifications, and onboarded essential engineering support. In parallel, partnerships were initiated both in California as part of local customer discovery and Salton Sea community engagement, and more broadly across the broader pilot-line ecosystem to learn best practices and inform our approach.
In 2026, ECF will transition from build-out to launch, completing permitting and construction in partnership with the landlord, taking over the site, and executing factory and site acceptance testing (FAT/SAT) for the pilot line. ECF will define customer engagement models and supporting agreements, hire the core facility and workforce team in collaboration with Top Material and the Volta Foundation, and advance workforce and community engagement efforts with UC Berkeley, UC Riverside, and UC Santa Barbara. The year will feature the public launch of ECF and its pilot-line capabilities, including a ribbon-cutting event in Q4.
The Issue
California leads in battery innovation but lacks open-access pilot manufacturing infrastructure to transition technologies from the lab scale to commercialization and adoption. Without access to pilot-scale equipment and technical expertise, startups and researchers face long delays and steep cost barriers that cause many promising battery innovations—especially in underserved sectors like heavy-duty transportation, industrial electrification, and stationary storage—to stall before reaching the market. Companies currently have limited access to overbooked facilities, often located a plane ride away for initial testing, which significantly slows the pace of iteration. Others attempt to overcome scale-up hurdles by funding their own pilot manufacturing lines, which require immense capital expenditures, substantial engineering expertise, and long timelines, resources often beyond the capabilities and risk tolerance of startups. This gap in the California innovation ecosystem is only growing as battery production involves sophisticated and expensive manufacturing processes not yet found in California.
Project Innovation
By providing open-access, state-of-the-art pilot manufacturing capabilities and expertise alongside comprehensive ecosystem support—including workforce training, corporate partnerships, and company incubation—this shared-user non-profit battery pilot manufacturing facility will serve as a cornerstone for battery innovation in California. This pilot manufacturing line addresses a critical barrier by bridging the gap between early-stage component innovation and the fully integrated battery cells required by end users. By providing shared, full-service fabrication and testing capabilities, the facility will remove major scale-up hurdles, reduce inefficiencies, and accelerate the commercialization of next-generation battery technologies developed in California. The agreement concurrently develops the people needed to manufacture and test these batteries—advancing both the technology and the talent pipeline.
Project Goals
Project Benefits
This Agreement will lead to technological advancement and breakthroughs to overcome barriers to the achievement of the State of California’s statutory energy goals by promoting the continued growth of the EV and energy storage sector, driving further advances in electrification.
Affordability
The Electrochemistry Foundry (ECF) reduces long-term costs for California ratepayers by providing shared, open-access pilot manufacturing infrastructure that lowers the capital-intensive barriers for emerging energy storage companies. By accelerating the commercialization of high-efficiency battery technologies, the project helps drive down the cost of grid-scale storage and electric vehicle components.
Economic Development
This project stimulates economic development by establishing a specialized manufacturing hub in Hayward while building a statewide "innovation-to-production" pipeline through academic partnerships with UC Riverside and UC Santa Barbara.
Key Project Members
Subrecipients
Match Partners
