Ascend Elements team members and partners in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, have celebrated a major milestone in the construction of, according to Ascend Elements, North America's first electric vehicle battery cathode precursor (pCAM) manufacturing facility. Turner Construction Company, Kokosing Construction, and SSOE Group worked together to place the final piece of structural steel on the 315,000-square-foot pCAM leaching building. The pCAM building is one of many large structures under construction on the 140-acre Apex 1 campus.
pCAM is an engineered material made to precise microstructure specifications for use in electric vehicle batteries. While most of the world's pCAM is made in China from primary (mined) metals, U.S.-based Ascend Elements is commercializing a method to make sustainable pCAM from recycled lithium-ion battery materials.
The Apex 1 project is funded in part by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and grants from the U.S. Department of Energy. Construction will continue into 2025. When finished, the $1 billion Apex 1 campus will produce engineered battery materials for 750,000 EVs per year.
