re: "Through the SBV Pilot, the company will utilize Argonne National Laboratory staff and expertise to determine the optimal metallization scheme for porous silicon as well as reliable and reproducible processes and insights into possible causes of degradation, capacity fade and dendrite growth."
As I recall, degradation, capacity fade and dendrite growth were severe problems with the original lithium battery. It took a lot of experimentation, design tweaking and lastly, pure luck, to finally stumble on the right combination of additives to get it working good enough for commercialization. Since this is a new design, will the same fixes apply? The wording seems carefully chosen to avoid sounding negative but doesn't really rule out that there may be some bugs yet to be worked out.