EV Technology Briefing — compiled and curated by Chris Lee
Factorial lists on Nasdaq, BYD’s 1.5 MW chargers land in Europe, and GM feeds packs to Redwood
Week of June 3–10, 2026
Three signs the EV supply chain is maturing. A solid-state maker went public on the back of a 745-mile range test. BYD opened chargers abroad that trip three times a Supercharger’s peak power. And GM turned its retired battery packs into grid storage instead of scrap.
Solid-State Chemistry
Factorial lists on Nasdaq after a Mercedes EQS covers 745 miles on one charge
Factorial began trading as FAC after a Mercedes EQS ran 745 miles on its FEST cells. Credit: Karma Automotive, via Electrek.
Factorial Energy closed a SPAC merger with Cartesian Growth Corp III on June 8 and began trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker FAC, a deal valued at about $1.3 billion that raised roughly $110 million to commercialize its solid-state cells. Its FEST platform reaches an energy density of 375 Wh/kg, a figure Stellantis independently verified, on automotive-format 77 Ah cells.
The listing came after a road test in which Mercedes-Benz drove a modified EQS more than 745 miles (1,200 km) on a single charge using Factorial cells. Factorial says a comparable pack delivers about 25% more usable energy than lithium-ion while weighing roughly 40% less and taking up around a third of the volume.
Named development partners include Mercedes-Benz, Stellantis, Hyundai, Kia and Karma Automotive.
BYD switches on its first 1,500 kW flash-charging sites in Europe
BYD’s overseas megawatt chargers peak at 1,500 kW, about triple a Tesla V4 Supercharger. Credit: Klaus Hartmann / BYD, via Electrek.
BYD opened its first overseas megawatt Flash Charging sites in Germany and the UK, rated up to 1,500 kW, roughly three times the 500 kW ceiling of Tesla’s V4 Superchargers. The stations work with BYD’s Blade Battery 2.0 and a kilovolt-class architecture. BYD quotes 10% to 70% state of charge in about 5 minutes and a cold-weather figure of 20% to 97% in 12 minutes at −30°C.
The chargers use standard CCS ports so any EV can plug in, though peak output requires a Blade Battery 2.0 vehicle such as the Denza Z9 GT. Each site buffers energy in an on-site battery charged overnight at off-peak rates, which BYD says lets it price sessions below 50 pence and smooths the grid-demand spike a 1.5 MW draw would otherwise cause.
BYD plans 300 chargers in the UK and 3,000 across Europe by the end of 2026.
GM becomes the first automaker to tie into Redwood’s full battery lifecycle
GM’s retired packs become grid storage through Redwood; the first project is 1.5 MW / 7.2 MWh from about 100 packs. Credit: Redwood Materials, via Electrek.
GM signed on as the first automaker to work with Redwood Materials across the entire battery lifecycle, spanning recycling of scrap and end-of-life packs through redeploying used packs as stationary storage. The first project is a 1.5 MW / 7.2 MWh system built from about 100 repurposed GM packs at a Michigan facility, projected to save roughly $3 million in electricity over its life.
Redwood’s Pack Manager software controls the mixed chemistries and varied states of degradation in each installation without fully disassembling the packs. Its largest site, a 12 MW / 63 MWh microgrid in Nevada assembled from 792 packs, has held 99.2% operational availability over seven months.
GM and its Ultium Cells joint venture have shipped more than 28,000 metric tons of material to Redwood for recovery, with about 10,000 more packs queued for reuse.
