Investment Conference. Hello everyone, and thank you for joining H.C. Wainwright's Global Investment Conference. My name's Mason, and it is our pleasure to introduce John from Solid Power.
Good morning. John Van Scoter, President and CEO of Solid Power. Solid Power is a Denver area based advanced battery materials company. We were formed in 2011 out of University of Colorado Boulder. We currently have 230 employees in two locations in and around the Boulder area. We also have an office in Korea. We just updated the investor presentation. I won't have time to go through all of it. I've just selected a few slides. But if I spark your interest, hopefully you can take a look at the full deck online on our webpage. As I said, we're focused on the next generation of advanced batteries, so-called all-solid-state batteries. We have a very unique business model. We focus on the electrolyte manufacturing and provide that to tier one battery manufacturers as well as EV OEMs.
We have a very scalable, very stable process, that is so-called wet process that uses much less CapEx compared to our competitors in terms of scaling. We also have a unique ability to test our electrolyte all the way through the cell, and so we have a feedback loop to verify the performance characteristics of our electrolyte in battery cells. We focus very heavily on partnerships. Notably, we've had a greater than eight-year partnership with BMW, an over five-year partnership with SK On, and more recently, a new partnership with Samsung SDI. Why all-solid-state batteries? Lithium-ion batteries today worked for going on three decades, and they are the incumbent. But there are diminishing returns in terms of advanced performance, and cost as they go forward. We believe sulfide based all-solid-state batteries is the solution. It's a new battery technology.
It replaces the liquid electrolyte that's in every one of today's lithium-ion batteries with a sulfide solid material. It offers step function improvements in some key areas of battery performance. I'll touch on that subsequently. It can be used across-- We are primarily focused on EVs, but it can be used across, more recently, humanoids, drones, other segments. The electrolyte is literally a powder. You see it there in those glass jars. Then at the microscopic level there, 1 μm-5 μm, you see pictured next to that in another image. What it offers is much improved energy density. Think of it as reducing range anxiety in EVs, where today's EVs, say, get 300 mi on a charge. Think of doubling that with the same size battery. It also offers better battery life, so you can cycle the battery more than current lithium-ion.
Depending on the cell design, it could offer improved charging speeds, and then it is a big improvement in terms of safety. The other big advantage of sulfide electrolytes that we offer is it can be manufactured at the cell level on the existing roll-to-roll LIB equipment. It doesn't require any new equipment. Current factories can be retrofitted to this technology. Within the last five years, the market has really voted and validated our whole approach with sulfides. All of the companies you see pictured there are pursuing sulfide based chemistries for the next generation of batteries. You see us as a material supplier there, in the center. Then the cell manufacturers, again, we have a relationship with the top two in Korea, focusing on the third. Also in Japan with Panasonic and the U.S. here with Factorial Energy. The OEMs, again, we have a long relationship with BMW.
We've done joint development agreements with Ford and others that you see pictured there. We think that sulfides offer the best manufacturability in cost and performance of any advanced battery material. Why Solid Power? First and foremost, we have a world-class modeling organization. We started an AI machine learning team back in 2023, and they've really put us in the forefront utilizing our dataset, which is very rich over our long history, to be able to improve our manufacturing as well as explore advanced chemistries for the next generation of electrolyte. We have a rapid innovation cycle with the Electrolyte Innovation Center. We have a pre-pilot scale of everything that we have at the pilot scale. We can very rapidly customize our electrolytes for customers' needs. I mentioned the feedback loop that's very unique, to be able to validate all the way through cell performance.
We have this wet process, which is highly scalable and has a structural CapEx cost advantage for scaling. Again, we focus very heavily on partnerships. We have really been focused heavily on EVs to date. But more recently, humanoids have come into the forefront. It's very possible that those will start production prior to the electrical vehicles. We are seeing demo cars now using all-solid-state batteries. Some are semi-solid, but all-solid-state batteries in the case of BMW's i7 last year with us. You'll see more demo cars coming out in the coming quarters and years, and that will give way to small fleet and then larger fleets in the early 2030s, is our current belief. Also, applications into aviation and defense with drones. We also are getting some keen interest in off-highway vehicles, mining, and oil and gas.
Batteries are all about scaling. We right now today have a pilot scale in Colorado. It's 30 metric tons of material per annum. We're in the final phases of scaling up to the next level. It's a continuous flow process that will get us to 75 metric tons by the end of this year. Then the third phase is going to be with a partner in Korea. We're in advanced negotiation stage with a large conglomerate there to do a 500 metric ton plant, to be online in 2028. Ultimately, we'll increment up from that 500 metric ton by 2,000 metric ton increments, all within the same site, notably in Korea. We're on the cusp of real revenues as we go through the back half of this decade and into early next. Cost. This is a new slide for us here.
You see where we are at the 30 metric ton level, and that will come down significantly with the continuous flow process that we'll have by the end of this year. Then again, with this 500 metric ton plant, and then on down to approaching cost parity with existing LIB electrolytes. Our balance sheet is very strong. We have almost $420 million of cash on our balance sheet, no debt. We do have a $50 million U.S. Department of Energy grant we're using for this continuous flow line that we're bringing up. We're in very good position from a cash standpoint to be able to make it through. We're in the minority there in the battery market. We have a very strong discipline around our spend. Our spend is down year-on-year, even though our R&D projects are up.
We're leveraging external funding, the DOE I mentioned, but also the partnership in Korea will be a shared CapEx partnership. We're continuing to preserve our flexibility, taking advantage of market conditions. With that, I will open it up to any questions that you have.