Amprius Secures $75 Million U.S. Grant for Drone Battery Production

Amprius Tech­nolo­gies has been award­ed a grant of up to $75 mil­lion from the U.S. Depart­ment of War to con­vert an exist­ing elec­tric vehi­cle bat­tery pro­duc­tion line for high-ener­gy-den­si­ty bat­tery cells used in unmanned aer­i­al sys­tems.

The fund­ing comes through the Depart­ment of War’s Indus­tri­al Base Analy­sis and Sus­tain­ment (IBAS) pro­gramme, which sup­ports domes­tic man­u­fac­tur­ing capa­bil­i­ties con­sid­ered impor­tant to nation­al defence. The project is intend­ed to estab­lish high­er-vol­ume U.S. pro­duc­tion of advanced bat­ter­ies for Group 1, 2 and 3 unmanned air­craft sys­tems.

Amprius plans to retro­fit an exist­ing U.S.-based EV bat­tery pro­duc­tion line oper­at­ed by a South Kore­an bat­tery man­u­fac­tur­er. The com­pa­ny expects the con­vert­ed facil­i­ty to begin pro­duc­tion by ear­ly 2028, with an annu­al capac­i­ty of approx­i­mate­ly 12 mil­lion Amprius cells.

The over­all con­ver­sion project is expect­ed to cost about $100 mil­lion. Amprius and its South Kore­an man­u­fac­tur­ing part­ner will pro­vide addi­tion­al invest­ment, includ­ing in-kind con­tri­bu­tions, along­side the gov­ern­ment fund­ing.

The bat­ter­ies pro­duced on the mod­i­fied line are intend­ed to meet domes­tic sourc­ing require­ments under the U.S. Nation­al Defense Autho­riza­tion Act (NDAA). The project is expect­ed to increase Amprius’ abil­i­ty to sup­ply domes­ti­cal­ly pro­duced pouch cells to defence cus­tomers at high­er vol­umes.

Amprius devel­ops lithi­um-ion bat­ter­ies using sil­i­con-anode tech­nol­o­gy. The com­pa­ny says its cells can pro­vide high­er ener­gy den­si­ty than con­ven­tion­al graphite-anode bat­ter­ies, with poten­tial ben­e­fits for appli­ca­tions where weight and endurance are impor­tant.

For unmanned air­craft, high­er ener­gy den­si­ty can allow addi­tion­al ener­gy to be car­ried with­out a cor­re­spond­ing increase in bat­tery weight. This can poten­tial­ly sup­port longer flight times or greater pay­load capac­i­ty, although the oper­a­tional per­for­mance of indi­vid­ual air­craft will depend on their over­all design and mis­sion require­ments.

The new U.S. pro­duc­tion capa­bil­i­ty will com­ple­ment Amprius’ exist­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing net­work, which includes facil­i­ties and con­tract man­u­fac­tur­ing rela­tion­ships in the Unit­ed States, South Korea and Chi­na.

Thomas Sleightholm

Thomas is a con­tent writer for eVTOL Insights, cov­er­ing all aspects of the glob­al Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem. Got a sto­ry for him? Please send an email to editorial@evtolinsights.com

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