Startup plans to create hundreds of new US jobs with impressive EV battery manufacturing plant: 'It's a wild project'

Massachusetts-based electric vehicle battery startup Nanoramic Laboratories has chosen Bridgeport, Connecticut, as the site of its first major factory, which it says could employ 200 or more people in the future.

Nanoramic, through its parent company FastCap, has gotten a big investment from General Motors as well as the U.S. Department of Energy, which has provided it with $47.5 million in funding.

The U.S. government has been clear about its intentions to spur more EV usage, as part of its purported plan to help address the pollution caused by the transportation sector. Tax credits that make EVs cheaper for consumers were included in the Inflation Reduction Act and are contingent on cars containing batteries that were manufactured in the United States, hence General Motors' involvement.

The technology that Nanoramic Laboratories is developing includes lithium iron phosphate electrode technology that could enable batteries to charge faster and have longer ranges, as well as a battery that can be made without cobalt, which is expensive and environmentally destructive to mine.

Bridgeport already has a relationship with one major EV battery startup, as the Danbury, Connecticut-headquartered Cadenza Innovation recently announced that it would be giving the Bridgeport Fire Department its first storage battery installation. 

With the addition of the Nanoramic Laboratories plant, it sounds like Bridgeport could be on the verge of becoming something of a New England clean energy production hub. (The city also unfortunately just lost out on a major wind farm project.)

"We'll work with [Nanoramic] in any way that we can — obviously it's very exciting," Bridgeport Mayor Joseph Ganim said. "It's a wild project. I mean, it's $47 million with sustainability and workforce development — 200 jobs tied in with the University of Bridgeport. We want to continue to identify ourselves as a Northeast city for sustainability."

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