Electrovaya is a Canadian battery technology company that develops and manufactures lithium-ion battery systems for industrial vehicles, robotics and energy storage applications. The company is known for its proprietary Infinity Battery Technology, which is designed to prioritize battery safety, longevity and performance in heavy-duty operating environments.
Your path into leadership at Electrovaya happened over a long period. How did your role evolve from the technical side into leading the business more broadly?
Electrovaya has been in batteries for nearly 30 years, but it’s really only in the last few years that the market has fully aligned with the technology we have. We survived while many companies faltered. I came from a technical background — a PhD at Cambridge, partly at MIT — and I still remain heavily involved in product and technology development today.
I started taking more responsibility around 2018 and 2019 when we launched into material handling and began building relationships with end customers and OEMs, including Toyota. At that point, the company had just closed its German operations and was in a difficult financial position. But we had a differentiated battery technology with much higher safety and much longer cycle life, which fit material handling well because those vehicles operate indoors, often 24/7, with frequent charging. Walmart Canada became our first major customer, and that adoption really saved the business. From there, I took a larger role in management and operations and became CEO in 2022.
The battery sector has gone through repeated boom-and-bust cycles over the last two decades. What allowed Electrovaya to navigate those periods when many companies struggled or disappeared?
Initially, like much of the industry, the excitement was around electric cars. We supplied companies like Chrysler and later Mercedes through the electric Smart car, but automotive was an extremely difficult space because it involved cutting-edge technology while simultaneously becoming commoditized. Asian players were able to bring pricing down faster than we could, so it wasn’t necessarily the best fit for us.
Part of why we survived was because we didn’t over-expand and kept a private-company mentality. But the real pivot came from combining several technology pieces together, especially our ceramic separator membrane. Most lithium-ion batteries use polymer separators that shrink when overheated, which can lead to short circuits and thermal runaway fires. Our separator is over 90% ceramic, giving it very high thermal stability. Even if the battery gets very hot, the separator remains intact. Cells produced with this technology — now in the millions — have a perfect safety record.
What priorities have guided Electrovaya’s technology development?
The separator was one major differentiator, but we also used that ceramic system to enable different electrolyte materials and new cell designs. When you combine it all together, you get a lithium-ion battery that is both very safe and able to cycle for an extremely long time without degrading. Most phone batteries last about 1,000 cycles. Our batteries can do roughly 15,000 cycles.
That matters for applications like robots, forklifts and energy storage systems for data centers, where batteries go through constant charging and discharging cycles and need to maintain performance over time. These systems are often inside buildings or beside very expensive equipment, so safety is critical. Those mission-critical applications value safety and cycle life enough to pay more for the product. That ultimately allowed us to become one of the very few profitable lithium-ion battery companies in North America.
In terms of growth beyond Electrovaya’s core material handling business, which markets do you see becoming most important next?
Material handling has driven our growth so far and remains our bread and butter. Going forward, though, we see major opportunities in energy storage, robotics and defense. The most important area for us is energy storage for critical infrastructure like data centers. Traditional energy storage systems are largely optimized around cost per kilowatt hour, which becomes a commoditized race to the bottom.
Data centers have massive fluctuating power needs and require systems that can smooth those fluctuations with very high cycling capability, often cycling 50 times a day. At the same time, they need to be extremely safe because they sit beside very expensive chips and infrastructure. We believe our technology is a much better fit for that use case. Robotics is another major area, especially as AI-driven automation expands, because these systems need to operate continuously to be valuable. Defense is also growing, particularly around electrified devices like drones that require both high performance and high safety.
Although Electrovaya is headquartered in Canada, much of the company’s growth is tied to the U.S. market. What differences have stood out to you between the two?
Our sales are dominated by the United States because that’s where the market is for our product. Canada is not even our second-largest market right now — we probably sell more batteries into Japan, Australia and Singapore than we do in Canada. We’ve definitely seen lower confidence around trying new technologies in Canada. At the same time, we’ve expanded significantly here. When I became CEO in 2022, we had roughly 70 or 80 employees in Canada. Today we’re around 140 to 150 and continuing to invest.
But there are structural differences. In the U.S., manufacturing batteries qualifies for significant production tax credits. For a company our size, there’s nothing equivalent in Canada unless you’re a very large player negotiating directly with the federal government. Financing has also been easier in the U.S. Our facility in Jamestown is funded through the Export-Import Bank of the United States, and we didn’t see the same appetite when we explored Canadian options years ago. U.S. buyers can also leverage incentives to purchase American-made battery systems, while tariffs on Chinese imports help level the playing field. In Canada, those supports and barriers largely don’t exist.
The battery industry has become increasingly tied to industrial policy and energy security. How does that affect the way you think about competition?
Right now, getting this plant running is what keeps me up at night. But fundamentally, we stay ahead through the product. We’re highly differentiated on the technology side, and ultimately that’s how you compete. China recognized the battery industry strategically years before many Western countries did and invested heavily through subsidies, export incentives and production support. They did the same thing in solar and now dominate both industries.These are strategic industries because they’re tied directly to power and energy security, and countries are starting to recognize that more meaningfully.
China recognized the battery industry strategically years before many Western countries did In Canada there’s now more discussion around “Buy Canada” policies and strategic industrial support.
Time will tell how much changes, but we definitely want to see Electrovaya participating more in Canada because that’s where we’re from. At this point, though, we’re really both a U.S. and Canadian company in terms of personnel, manufacturing and shareholders.
