Farther, faster, easier: Hungary's long-range EV battery tech startup

A Hungarian company says it has developed a new battery technology that could help electric vehicles travel farther, charge faster and use less energy during production.

The innovation focuses on the anode, one of the two electrodes inside a lithium-ion battery. While most drivers never see it, researchers believe it could play a major role in the future of electric mobility.

Inside a laboratory in Budapest, engineers at Edortech have spent years testing new ways to improve battery performance.

"In order for you to make a good cell, you need to go inside this container, and you need to look at what's happening inside with the lithium ions," said Dr. Lak György Bálint, chief technology officer of Edortech. "What we do is we reimagine and re-engineer the way we make the anode of the battery cell."

Most lithium-ion batteries used today rely on graphite inside the anode. Edortech's ONLi technology replaces that material with a metal-alloy layer formed directly on copper.

"We do a one-stop shop in one single step," Lak said. "We create a metal bonding on the copper surface, and we create an anode material which is durable, flexible. The capacity is in the range of what is required – in fact, it's double: the range is double what the graphite can produce."

The company says the process can increase battery capacity while simplifying production. That matters because every electric vehicle contains thousands of battery cells. Even a small improvement inside each cell can have a significant impact on overall vehicle performance.

Lak said replacing conventional battery cells with ONLi-based cells could lead to major gains in driving range.

"If we were to replace the conventional 21700 cells with the ONLi 21700 cells, our technology, you would get about a 60 to 80% capacity increase… you would get about 60 to 80% more range. So not 400 [kilometers], but 640," he said.

Cost remains one of the biggest barriers to wider EV adoption.

"I think the biggest problem with electric cars, it's not the range, it's not the charging speed... It's the price. It's definitely the price," EV journalist and vlogger Andras Horvat said. "And I don't really understand why the price is still so high because the battery prices have really come down and it’s much easier to build an electric car than a gas car."

Lak argues the company's manufacturing process could help address that issue.

"It's fast, it's scalable, it's cheap – the process is cheap," he said. "The initial cost of graphite activity is smaller than ours. But the graphite technology to actually coat it, it's insane. We are less than one-tenth of that cost."

The company is not planning to manufacture complete battery cells. Instead, it hopes to supply anodes to battery producers around the world – and Lak said interest from automakers is already growing.

"Several big companies, big car manufacturers… we are in talks about the technology and what it can bring," he said.

The technology remains in development, with commercial deployment targeted for 2028. For now, the focus is on scaling production and proving the technology can perform outside the lab.

If successful, one of the next advances in electric vehicles may come from a component most drivers will never see.