Lithium-sulfur materials company Lyten has appointed former Tesla, Panasonic and Quantumscape battery expert Celina Mikolajczak as its chief battery technology officer.
As the leader of Lyten’s Battery Product Innovation Group, Mikolajczak will be responsible for advancing the development of the LytCell™ lithium-sulfur battery to full commercial readiness and optimisation.
The announcement comes just weeks after she stepped down from her role at solid-state battery firm QuantumScape after citing “differing management styles”.
Mikolajczak said: “It’s impossible to ignore the fact that there will be insufficient nickel capacity to support even the currently announced OEM EV platforms.
“The industry needs alternatives to the high nickel cathodes used in conventional lithium-ion cells to meet the world’s automotive electrification and environmental goals.
“Lyten’s lithium-sulfur technology is one of the most promising for high-performance nickel-free battery chemistries, and I am excited to lead the deep technical bench at Lyten to deliver this energy storage platform to the marketplace.”
As chief battery technology officer, Mikolajczak will join Kevin Rhodes, VP of battery development, (former Chief Engineer at AVL), Jim Paye, VP of product management (former head of R&D at A123 Systems), and Zach Favors, VP of battery R&D, (former CTO of NexTech Batteries).
Mikolajczak will also partner with Greg Deveson, who was promoted to chief operating officer after serving as president, Automotive.
Mikolajczak’s CV includes helping develop the battery cells and packs for Tesla’s Model S, Model X, Model 3, and Roadster Refresh; and evolving Panasonic’s 2170 cell design and production processes to enable the output of billions of cells per year.
Dan Cook, Lyten CEO and co-founder, said: “Celina’s deep experience and knowledge in the highly sophisticated areas of cell engineering and the scaling of full cell architectures are unparalleled.
“She is a critical addition to our executive team as we focus on our LytCell lithium-sulfur battery in the near term for our automotive OEM and US government energy storage customers, and in the long term, on other lithium-sulfur storage applications.”