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Mercedes-Benz, aiming to introduce next-generation solid state batteries into its electric vehicles by 2026, said it has moved into advanced tests of a battery developed by Massachusetts-based Factorial Energy. The move comes amid increasing industry and investor skepticism about the mass-market potential of most next-gen EV batteries.

In the most recent sign of industry turmoil, Ionic Materials, another startup solid-state battery maker, on Tuesday let go all of its staff and closed its doors, as we reported. Sherwood Partners, a California-based receivership firm, this week began selling off Ionic’s intellectual property, laboratory equipment and other assets, according to a former Ionic employee. Sherwood and Ionic did not respond to emails.

Many in the EV industry have seen solid state batteries as a sort of holy grail propulsion system for EVs because they theoretically could deliver about 500 miles of driving range, charge fast, cost less than conventional lithium-ion batteries, and pose a lower fire risk because they eliminate flammable liquid as the electrolyte. But commercial solid state batteries seem unlikely to be ready until late this decade, and they are threatened by the improving performance and lower cost of conventional EV batteries. As we have written, as long as current “good enough” batteries deliver satisfactory performance, most automakers are unlikely to risk commercializing an untried technology such as solid state, even if such batteries might work better. The solid state players also face competition from next-gen silicon anode makers such as Sila Nanotechnologies and Enevate, which are in or near commercial EV production and deliver similar energy density and driving range as solid state designs.

Factorial CEO Siyu Huang told me she hopes the company’s batteries are in commercial EVs in 2027 or 2028. On Wednesday, Factorial said it had shipped “B Samples” of its 106 ampere-hour battery—20 times the charge capacity of a smartphone battery—to Mercedes. Few experimental batteries such as Factorial’s reach B Samples, which means its batteries have passed Mercedes’ lab tests and are ready to be tailored for the automaker’s qualification vehicles, where they will face around 18 months of further punishing tests. If they pass muster, Mercedes could ask Factorial for “C Sample” versions of its battery, which would be tailored yet again to fit a specific EV.

Factorial also has batteries in the earlier A Sample stage with Stellantis, with which it has a joint development agreement. At a conference last year, Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares highlighted the automaker’s work with Factorial, and suggested the carmaker would have a solid state battery powering an EV in 2026. Mercedes and Stellantis led Factorial’s $200 million Series D funding in 2022.

Huang, the Factorial CEO, argued that solid state batteries using lithium metal will compete well with conventional batteries because they allow EV makers to reduce the weight of the vehicles by up to 30%. Greater energy density means Factorial’s batteries can be smaller and lighter than conventional EV batteries, allowing EV designers to eliminate supporting steel and aluminum framing in the vehicle itself, she said. “That’s a huge amount of cost reduction,” she said.

In April, SES AI—which like Factorial uses lithium metal as the anode, but employs a liquid electrolyte—moved into the B Sample stage with Hyundai Motor, as we reported, putting it arguably ahead of Factorial. Another Factorial rival, California lithium-metal battery developer QuantumScape, has said it hopes to move into B Samples with undisclosed customers later this year.

Promotion for French billionaire’s second-youngest child follows his appointment as head of watches unit

French billionaire Bernard Arnault has appointed his son Frédéric as head of one of the family holding companies controlling LVMH, the latest in a series of promotions for the 29-year-old scion within the world’s largest luxury group.

The fourth of Arnault’s five children, Frédéric will replace Nicolas Bazire as managing director of Financière Agache, the company said on Thursday. The Arnault family owns 48 per cent of LVMH’s capital and 64 per cent of its voting rights. The Paris-listed group owns brands including Louis Vuitton, Dior and US jeweller Tiffany.

A graduate of top engineering school Ecole Polytechnique like his father, Frédéric was recently named chief executive of LVMH Watches, after a stint as chief executive of Swiss watchmaker TAG Heuer. He and his 32-year-old brother Alexandre were appointed to the LVMH board in April, joining older siblings Delphine and Antoine. Shares rose 1.34 per cent on Thursday, giving LVMH a market value of €381.46bn.

All changes in the roles of the five Arnault children, who all have roles within the LVMH, are scrutinised for signs of who might one day succeed the group’s 75-year-old patriarch.

Bernard Arnault has insisted that he has no intention of stepping back any time soon however, and the group two years ago increased the age limit for the chief executive role at LVMH to 80. But the French billionaire is carefully laying the groundwork for succession at the company by placing his children in key positions — a process that has increased in pace since the start of 2023. He recently reshuffled his top external managers in order to set up a generational handoff among senior executives that work alongside the family.

Delphine Arnault, 49, was appointed chief executive of Dior — the group’s second-biggest brand by sales after Louis Vuitton — at the start of 2023, and sits on LVMH’s executive committee.

Antoine, 47, is in charge of image and sustainability at the group, and was also named chief executive of Christian Dior SE — another family holding company above LVMH — at the end of 2022.

Alexandre is a senior executive at jeweller Tiffany & Co, which LVMH acquired for about $16bn in 2020. Jean, 25, runs watchmaking at Louis Vuitton.

Outside the family, the group’s managing director Antonio Belloni, 69, stepped down after 23 years as Bernard Arnault’s right hand in April, replaced by Stéphane Bianchi, formerly LVMH’s head of watches and jewellery, who is a veteran of family succession at French cosmetics group Yves Rocher.

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NET Power CEO Danny Rice says a new decarbonizing process could open the way for utilities to produce clean energy from natural gas

Danny Rice helped build one of the largest natural-gas producers in the U.S. and became a billionaire. In his newest venture, he is still betting on natural gas—but this time as part of an unusual process that aims to clean up gas-fired power generation.

Traditional gas power plants spit CO2 out of exhaust stacks, contributing to global warming. NET Power, a company that Rice took public in 2023 in a $1.5 billion SPAC deal, has developed a gas plant with a different process, using the carbon dioxide it produces to spin a turbine and create electricity—a technology it says will eliminate almost all CO2 emissions.

A move toward renewable power sources reinforces the need for natural gas, Rice argues, as wind and solar can’t crank out energy around the clock. NET Power, he says, aims to offer utility companies an affordable way to make the grid carbon-free.

“It’s a whole lot easier, and a whole lot safer, to try to find ways to decarbonize fossil fuels than it is to move away from them,” says Rice, who is NET Power’s chief executive.

The 43-year-old, who lives in Dallas, has taken four energy companies public, and sold two of them for a total of $10 billion, excluding debt. NET Power is backed by heavyweight investors including Houston-based oil giant Occidental Petroleum, which owns about 47% of the company. Rice plans to capitalize on President Biden’s signature climate law, which includes billions of dollars in subsidies for capturing and storing CO2 emissions.

NET Power’s technology has yet to be proven at scale, and the first plants will be much pricier to construct than traditional gas-fired plants.

Still, utilities warn that ballooning power demand from data centers and other industries will require more gas generation to complement renewables.

“We are going to need to address the emissions from gas,” says Dan Bakal, a senior program director at environmental nonprofit Ceres. “If NET Power can deliver a solution that’s cost-effective, there will be a market for it.”

Sporting a stubble, Rice stands out among often gray-haired oil-and-gas tycoons. He says he enjoys staying at home with his two young daughters and doing jigsaw puzzles with his wife. The couple married in 2007 in Las Vegas, two weeks after they met at a Houston country-music bar.

He is quick to highlight unorthodox achievements, such as winning a hot-dog eating competition hosted by Rice Energy, the gas producer he once ran. But his self-deprecating style belies an ambition to remake the world of energy.

“He’s a new generation, and he’s a new kind of cat,” says Maynard Holt, the founder and CEO of energy research and investment firm Veriten, which isn’t invested in NET Power.

Rice’s entrepreneurial bent can be traced back to his mother, who ran food businesses near Boston and raised him and two younger brothers after a divorce. After earning a Bachelor of Science in finance at Bryant University in Rhode Island, Rice worked in Houston as an oil-and-gas analyst, before moving to western Pennsylvania in 2008 to help his two brothers start Rice Energy.

With a $5 million loan from their father, a BlackRock energy-fund manager, the Rices leased land around Pittsburgh and drilled a first well. They were soon drilling for huge volumes of gas and taking the company public, with 33-year-old Danny Rice as CEO. Rice and his brothers worked grueling hours, blowing off steam by riding electric scooters in their Pittsburgh office.

“I’d be telling him, ‘Let’s go celebrate and have a drink,’ and he’d say, ‘No, let’s go work on the next piece,’” says his brother Toby Rice, who was the company’s chief operating officer at the time.

Eventually, Danny convinced his family—including brother Derek Rice, who served as Rice Energy’s executive vice president of exploration—to sell the company. In 2017, they struck a $6.7 billion stock-and-cash deal for a sale to EQT, an Appalachian rival where Toby now serves as CEO after the Rices won control. Danny Rice served on the board of EQT at the time, and still does.

“We essentially became billionaires overnight,” he says.

After a hiatus traveling around the globe with his wife and children, Rice scouted for energy deals. He pitched his brothers on investing in biogas producer Archaea Energy, eventually taking the company public via a $1.1 billion SPAC deal and selling it in 2022 to British oil giant BP for $3.3 billion in cash plus debt.

Hunting for their next venture, Rice and his brothers pondered investments in nuclear, hydrogen and geothermal energy. But while they believe these technologies will be helpful in ushering in a net-zero emissions future, they concluded they couldn’t grow fast enough to meet climate goals.

Natural gas, on the other hand, is produced in huge, cheap volumes in the U.S. every day, Rice says. If the CO2 emissions associated with burning gas to produce electricity could be economically captured, the grid could become greener quicker, he says. That is why he set his sights on NET Power.

Durham, N.C.-based NET Power’s origins date to 2010, when 8 Rivers Capital formed the company to deploy a new technology it invented to clean up gas-fired power generation. Today, natural gas accounts for around 40% of U.S. electricity generation. At the time Rice approached NET Power, Occidental owned about half of the company, and other investors included 8 Rivers and Constellation Energy—all of which are still involved.

NET Power’s patented process consists of burning natural gas along with oxygen to create heat and a mixture of pure CO2 and water that spins a turbine and creates power. Some of the CO2 is reused in the system and the rest is sequestered underground—which means that a plant using the technology will emit virtually no CO2, according to the company.

A traditional gas power plant burns air, mostly made of nitrogen and oxygen, along with natural gas—which is mainly methane—creating a concoction that CO2 can’t easily be scrubbed from.

“These guys were pioneering and proving a new way to generate power,” says Rice, who owns about 5% of NET Power. But the startup lacked the heft needed to make a big dent in power-plant emissions, he says. “You’re sitting on the most important technology in the energy space, and most people don’t know about it.”

In 2022, he approached NET Power with an offer to go public, and convinced Occidental, its largest investor, to bless the deal. The Rices have invested a total of $135 million in NET Power via their family office, which includes Danny, Toby, Derek and a half-brother Ryan.

NET Power operates a small demonstration plant in La Porte, Texas, southeast of Houston. It has synchronized to the state’s electric grid, and is about to start testing specially designed turbine components. Meanwhile, the firm is building a roughly $1 billion commercial power plant in West Texas that is expected to enter operations around 2027.

Rice aims to mostly license NET Power plants to utilities, which would build the facilities and pay the company a fee and royalties to use the technology. In the U.S. alone, Rice sees a market for more than 800 plants, based on the number of aging coal, gas and nuclear plants that will need replacement. Other customers, including energy-hungry tech companies, could also benefit from using the zero-emissions power plant, he says.

NET power has achieved breakthroughs at its demonstration plant, but it remains to be seen whether the company can operate at a commercial scale, says Thomas Meric, an analyst at financial-services firm Janney Montgomery Scott. Another hurdle: convincing the general public that natural gas can be successfully decarbonized. “Acceptance of natural gas as net-zero [fuel] will be a very serious challenge for NET Power,” says Meric.

Price is another unknown. Net-zero electricity might be sold at a premium in certain markets but how substantial that might be is unclear.

Additionally, the company must secure land where CO2 can be sequestered and get permits to inject CO2 underground—potentially big-ticket items. In some cases, the company will need permits to connect to the grid, a step that has slowed down new solar and wind generators.

Prices are falling in outer areas where supply is high, but prime central arrondissements remain competitive and expensive

It wasn’t long ago that agents in some of Paris’s less affluent arrondissements were celebrating hitting the symbolic figure of €10,000 per square metre for the first time. It’s a rather different picture now. The cost of living crisis, stricter lending criteria and higher interest rates have combined to dampen prices in the capital — to the extent that falling, not rising, prices are “the hot topic of conversation between Parisians”, says estate agent Helena Hermanns of Leggett Immobilier.

Last autumn, the average price per sq m in the city fell below the €10,000 mark for the first time since 2019. Latest figures from the Notaires de Paris put the average value at €9,490 per sq m, a fall of 7.9 per cent over the past year.

“There’s been a correction in prices in neighbourhoods that shot up quickly [before and during the pandemic],” says Roddy Aris of Knight Frank. The most affected locations are in the east and north of the city, such as the 10th, 11th and 18th, while those with the steepest falls are away from the centre, closer to the Périphérique ring road. “There’s so much stock on the market here, buyers are getting picky,” says Hermanns. “Previously, an apartment on the fourth floor would sell quickly, now buyers want a lift — and they have time to browse. They don’t need to compromise.”

Yet this is a tale of two cities: while properties further out are plentiful and prices are falling, in the heart of Paris, a lack of supply and international demand are keeping the market buoyant and values high.

Although prices per sq m are generally €11,000-€13,000 in central Paris, average figures never tell the full story. “It’s a barometer price,” says Susie Hollands of Vingt Paris, who adds that it doesn’t apply to the areas that appeal to her overseas buyers. “You used to be able to find a nice property, say a one-bed in the Marais, for around €12,000 per sq m but now it’s more like €16,000,” she says. “On the Left Bank, it’s €25,000 and up.” At the top level, this figure rises to €30,000-€45,000 or more.

Many high-end homes are never advertised. “Some 70 per cent of the properties I handle are off-market,” says Hollands. In some areas that are traditionally home to bourgeois French families who don’t want homes to end up in the hands of outsiders, it’s difficult to find anything for sale.

In spite of the falls in the mainstream market, Alison Ashby of Junot Fine Properties/Knight Frank has seen sales of above €50,000 per sq m in prime homes over the past year, for example hôtels particuliers (period town houses) with gardens and penthouses with large terraces. In 2023 her agency sold two houses in the 16th arrondissement at €50mn-€80mn.

Overseas buyers in Paris rose to their highest level for the past decade in 2022 (the latest data held by the Notaires de France). “For the best addresses on the Left Bank, French and international buyers are fighting it out,” says Hollands. “The French often win because they move faster.”

Simon Colboc, who works in finance in Paris but previously lived and worked in London and Brussels, welcomes the vibrancy brought by overseas buyers. “I feel our city has a lot to gain from being more open,” he says. He knows families who have sold large, central apartments to a foreign buyer, “or a returning French entrepreneur or trader who’d made a couple of million in Singapore or Dubai and wanted to invest at home.”

At the top of the market, Tim Swannie of Home Hunts says interest is growing among Middle Eastern, American and Chinese buyers: “Views are popular, as are high floors, they’re quieter and brighter — but only if there’s a lift.”

The central and western 6th, 7th, 8th and 16th arrondissements — home to high-end boutiques and restaurants, embassies and elegant Haussmann architecture, as well as landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower and Champs-Élysées — remain popular.

“Americans seek properties with authentic Parisian charm on the Left Bank, while Asian or Middle East buyers look for perfectly renovated properties near the Seine or in the chic Golden Triangle [between Avenues Montaigne, Champs-Élysées and George-V] or Trocadéro neighbourhoods,” says Ashby. While large, classic homes are sought after, smaller properties in the right locations sell quickly too. “Small studios and one-beds appeal to investors, who won’t hesitate to make aggressive offers in a quiet market,” says Hermanns.

Agents say cash buyers tend to corner the prime Paris market, although Swannie adds that some buyers use a mortgage to limit their wealth tax liability. Wealth tax is payable for overseas buyers with French property worth more than €1.3mn, but mortgage debt is deductible from the valuation.

American Helen McDowell had owned a home in the south of France since 2016 before deciding she wanted a base in Paris too. “The Left Bank feels perfect to me, I knew exactly where I wanted to be, down to about two or three specific streets. Saint-Germain is such an iconic neighbourhood with amazing restaurants, cafés and shops.” After initially looking for a small pied-à-terre, she ended up buying a three- bedroom penthouse with a roof terrace and a view of the Eiffel Tower.

While the anticipated flood of bankers moving from the UK to Paris since Brexit is more of a steady trickle, it has had a wider effect on international demand with buyers from further afield choosing Paris over London as their European base, says Swannie. And, if a UK crackdown on non-doms drives some wealthy foreigners out of Britain, Paris is an attractive alternative with France offering comparable “impatriate” regimes.

“The pull of the luxury fashion world can’t be understated” for wealthy international families, says Ashby. But whether buyers are attracted by the fashion houses, the standard of education or the literary cafés, she says “there’s a neighbourhood for each of them. Paris is international, they feel part of the city.”

The Saudi Fashion Commission in collaboration with WWD will bestow the recognition on the Italian luxury company during the gala in Riyadh on June 6.

MILAN — Loro Piana is marking its centennial this year — but the Italian luxury brand is showing no signs of aging.

Because of the brand’s growth and being one of the pillars of the “quiet luxury” trend, Loro Piana will receive the International Brand of the Year Award on June 6 in Riyadh during the WWD x Saudi Fashion Awards gala presented by the Saudi Fashion Commission in collaboration with WWD.

The Loro Piana family began trading wool and fine textiles at the beginning of the 19th century in Trivero, in northern Italy. Pietro Loro Piana founded the company as a wool mill in 1924 in the country’s Quarona. In the mid-1940s, Franco Loro Piana started exporting precious textiles outside of Italy, an activity further developed by his sons Sergio and Pier Luigi in the 1970s, when they started helming the firm and expanding into luxury retail operations. LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton acquired a majority stake in the company in 2013, further developing its business over the years.

The brand is helmed by chief executive officer Damien Bertrand, who joined the company in November 2021 from Christian Dior Couture in Paris, where he was managing director.

Bertrand has seen expansion of the brand across retail and categories, while maintaining its luxury ethos. Here, some of Loro Piana’s most recent initiatives and highlights:

In February, the company unveiled its fall 2024 collection in Milan, expanding its offer in new and versatile directions, including statement jewelry and eveningwear — cue an allover sequin dress in silk georgette — and raising the bar yet again in its search for superior textile quality.

The brand’s “fiori di cardo” flower symbol — representing the thistle used historically as a tool to raise and brush cashmere in its factory — was turned into golden pins that closed jacket collars. The styling tip nodded to the way the late Sergio Loro Piana used to store jackets in his wardrobe, with the lapels closed and pinned to maintain the softness of the fold.

Fabrics ranged from cashmere and vicuña to cheviot, CashDenim and the exclusive “Pecora Nera” naturally dark wool sourced in New Zealand. The Sopra Visso wool sourced in Italy’s Sibillini Mountains was used in sophisticated yet rustic cropped jackets and ladylike pencil skirts.

For men, there were double-breasted tuxedos and plush shearling coats, field jackets, unstructured blazers and roomy overshirts.

The Loro Piana Record Bale leads to superior quality, contends deputy chairman Pier Luigi Loro Piana, whose passion and commitment have driven the brand to reward and secure the finest wool in the world. The annual Record Bale Award, which he established in 1997, has been leading to increasingly finer Merino wool fibers.

The award was once again bestowed in February and Pier Luigi Loro Piana, who holds the role of deputy chairman, said at the time that the recognition was “never about simply setting a record, it was instrumental in proving that we could evolve and improve the fibers to reach superior quality.”

The award was bestowed to two farms, one in Australia and one in New Zealand. The Australian farm, Pyrenees Park, with Pamela, Robert and Bradley Sandlant, secured a new World Record Bale with a Merino wool fiber of only 10.2 microns, surpassing the 2013 record of 10.3 microns. A micron is the unit of measurement of the fineness of a fiber equivalent to one-thousandth of a millimeter. For context, a human hair measures 80 microns.

The award ceremonies have been held around the world, from New York and Tokyo to Los Angeles, Rome, Milan and, most recently, in London.

This ever-finer wool can only be obtained from the shearing of a selection of unique Merino sheep raised by expert breeders, explained Loro Piana, “keeping under control the process of selection of the animals for years in a scientific way. These are long-term programs, it takes two or three generations of sheep and require constancy and long-term vision.”

The World Record Bale is preciously stored in a glass container at the Loro Piana Quarona factory in Italy’s Piedmont region, until the record is beaten. The previous bale of 10.3 microns can be now put in production.

The precious Record Bale garments are differentiated with a special label that documents their traceability, from the year the animal was shorn, to its origin, to the fiber’s micron. The company has vertically integrated manufacturing facilities.

Through the Record Bale competition, Loro Piana has created the Gift of Kings, ultrafine wool. The name is inspired by the Spanish royal family’s practice of gifting pairs of Merino sheep to other monarchs to honor these relationships. In the second half of the 18th century, the animals were taken to New Zealand and Australia, where the habitat proved ideal.

The company held the eighth edition of the Loro Piana Knit Design Award in May, hinging on the theme of “Fast Forward Heritage,” and the reinterpretation of knitwear.

Students Pierre Sauvageot and Björn Backes from the École Duperré Paris, tutored by Professor François-Xavier Herody, won the award — a gleaming silver ribbon-like trophy — for their project. Titled “Cavalieri, a History of Innovation,” it reinterpreted the armor of ancient knights with the use of Loro Piana cashmere yarns blended with iron threads, maintaining softness while adding structure, thus combining the natural fiber’s legacy with modernity in using the metal thread and the knitted armor’s contemporary design.

The winners were short-listed from a panel of eight applicants hailing from international fashion and designs schools such as Italy’s Accademia Costume e Moda; the Fashion Institute of Technology; the Institut Français de la Mode, and Tokyo’s Bunka Fashion College, among others.

The participating students were able to visit Loro Piana factories to discover production processes and stores and the winners received a scholarship, a contract to work for the company and the opportunity to develop their samples with help from the house’s research and development team. The final products will be showcased at the upcoming edition of textile trade show Pitti Filati, to be held in Florence from June 25 to 27.

The Loro Piana Knit Design Award was established in 2016 to reward talented students from leading design schools around the world who have been tasked with infusing innovation into the brand’s signature yarns, which include, among others, the Cashmere 2/27, Coarsehair, Supercashmere, registered Royal, Wish and Clan textiles, Sopravisso and Equilibrio.

In April, Loro Piana celebrated the work and vision of legendary Milanese architect and designer Cini Boeri on the centenary of her birth. “A Tribute to Cini Boeri” was installed at Loro Piana’s Milan sprawling headquarters at Cortile della Seta during the city’s Salone del Mobile, displaying Boeri’s iconic pieces upholstered in the Italian luxury brand’s most exclusive interiors fabrics.

The pieces, produced by Arflex, were installed in collaboration with Archivio Cini Boeri.

Some of her signature designs — including the Pecorelle [sheep] sofas and armchairs and the Bobo and Boborelax armchairs — were revisited in Loro Piana’s precious fabrics. The Botolo high and low three-legged chairs appeared in the brand’s cashmere and silk Cashfur in a special caramel color in a limited edition of 100 pieces.

This is a three-year project, with the patronage of the Triennale Milano museum, which will stage a retrospective on Cini Boeri in 2026. The Loro Piana Interiors division was launched in 2006, initially only aimed at professionals in the sector but now also open to end consumers. It is also present in the yachting and aviation industries and in the hospitality area.

Last year Loro Piana Interiors introduced a project in a collaboration with Argentinian designer and artist Cristián Mohaded, called “Apacheta,” inspired by the Andean tradition.