Dragonfly Energy's Director of Product Development on building safer lithium-ion batteries - and why solid-state is the only real end goal.

Mike Norton and Jackson Lyons sit down with Emily Litt, Director of Product Development at Dragonfly Energy - a Nevada-based battery company that's been making lithium-ion packs for off-grid applications since 2012, and quietly building toward something much bigger.

Emily's background is anything but linear. A decade leading sales and marketing teams, then a deliberate decision to retrain in materials science because she wanted to work on something that genuinely mattered. She joined Dragonfly as an intern, held every role in the R&D lab, and is now directing product development for a publicly traded company with a patented dry electrode manufacturing process and solid-state batteries on the roadmap.

In this episode:

Why Dragonfly's patented dry electrode process - which eliminates toxic solvents from battery manufacturing - was always designed for solid-state, not just cleaner lithium-ion
The one word that drives every product decision at Dragonfly: safety
How understanding what's happening at the electrochemical level inside a cell is what makes genuinely innovative product development possible
Why the Lithium Loop forming in Reno, Nevada is one of the most exciting developments in US battery supply chains right now
What it actually means to work at a company where your opinion counts even as an intern - and why that culture translates into better products
Dragonfly's take on the US supply chain challenge and why vertical integration matters

Plus: Emily's honest perspective on the non-linear career path, and why the skills she built outside of tech turned out to be some of the most valuable she has.

Emily Litt | LinkedIn

(36) Dragonfly Energy Corporation: Overview | LinkedIn