Solid State Batteries - FINALLY powering electric vehicles in 2024!

I once worked for a guy who literally forbade all of his subordinate managers, including me, from using the phrase “we're getting there”; he was one of those rigorous pedants who only accepted a specific completion date for a given task. so that I can hold you accountable every time you navigate past that date without having achieved your goal. It went pretty well, I lasted three months at that job! Anyway, I mention that little anecdote because today's video is the second of our twenty-four PROGRESS reviews on green technology, and the green technology we're reviewing today is

solid

-

state

batteries

.

The developers of this particular technology have used the phrase "we're getting there" so often since my first video on the topic back in '28, that you could be forgiven for thinking we're not actually getting there at all. So is it time to give up on another green technology pipe dream, or are we almost there? Hello and welcome to Just Have a Think. We have researched

solid

state

batteries

on no less than three separate occasions on this channel over the last five years or so. It is one of those extremely compelling technologies that, if it ever makes it to mass production at an affordable price, will truly revolutionize almost every sector of energy consumption for people like you and me, especially, of course, in the transportation sector, where current technology promises significantly higher energy density than current lithium-ion batteries, with ultra-fast charging times and much longer operational lives.

For the benefit of anyone who's had better things to do over the past five years, here's a quick summary of how it all works. In a typical lithium-ion battery, like the one we saw in last week's video, you typically find a cathode made of a lithium-based material such as lithium nickel manganese oxide, which is its NMC battery, and an anode. typically made of graphite. Surrounding all of that is a liquid electrolyte, usually made by adding lithium salts to a rather nasty flammable solvent. To stop the entire short circuit, it has a separator membrane in the middle of the electrolyte that will only allow the ions to pass through.

When the system is charged, lithium ions pass through the liquid electrolyte from the cathode side, energized by

electric

ity flowing from the charging device. It turns out that those charged particles are small enough to be captured within the lattice structure of graphite in a process called intercalation. As the battery discharges, the ions return to the cathode and the electrons return through an external circuit to do their useful work. And that's fine. In fact, it works very well for countless applications, from very small things like watches and smartphones to very large stationary energy storage installations in power grids.

But then old Elon came along and started putting lithium-ion batteries in cool cars that people actually wanted to buy. The Tesla brand has turned the auto industry upside down in just a few years, and now every automaker in the world is scrambling to get its house in order before shutting down all of its internal combustion engine production lines at some point. . in the next decade or so. As a result, a concept that was essentially first proposed by Michael Faraday in the early 19th century has suddenly become fashionable again in battery chemist labs around the planet, because it offers what most journalists technological, including this one. , generally known as the "holy grail" of battery cell technology.

Rightly or wrongly, one of the biggest perceived objections among potential buyers of new

electric

vehicles

is the dreaded range anxiety. So, alleviating this "not really real problem" has become something of an obsession for all the big car manufacturers, who either make their batteries absolutely crappy, which seems to me to be a rather counterproductive exercise, or who seek looking for ways to produce batteries that can receive AND deliver energy much more efficiently. Which brings us to solid state technology. For the purposes of this video, I'm going to ignore so-called thin-film solid-state cells that only store a very small amount of energy but can last a very, very long time and are already used in things like pacemakers and IoT devices, and in Instead I will focus on what are known as massive solid-state batteries that can store a lot of energy and are what electric vehicle developers are interested in.

There are currently dozens of different types of solid state batteries. bulk batteries under development around the world. Too many to go over individually in one video. But the basic theory, at least as far as this somewhat limited layman can understand, is this. The "solid" in "solid state" refers to the electrolyte, as you have no doubt already discovered yourself. So why is that good? Well, it means that in theory, if you can find a SOLID material like a ceramic or a glass or a solid polymer that lets the ions through but also effectively acts as a separator between the anode and the cathode, then you can get rid of the liquid. electrolyte, reduces the volume of the cell and effectively increases its energy density.

In theory, the rather inconvenient problem of dendrite growth that presents a potential fire risk in current lithium-ion batteries is also eradicated. And because it gets rid of the flammable SOLVENTS that liquid electrolytes are based on, your battery can now withstand much higher temperatures, meaning you can actually charge the charge at a truly scary rate without causing damage to the cell. But that is not all. Oh no! It turns out that solid-state batteries can also facilitate the use of lithium metal anodes. So why is THAT useful? Well, apparently if you can get rid of the graphite anode and replace it with lithium metal, then you'll potentially get EVEN MORE energy density.

The folks at BMW recently published this test data chart based on twelve different next-generation CATHODE materials, shown here along the x-axis at the bottom, and three different anode materials. You can see that changing the cathode doesn't affect the energy density much when combined with graphite OR graphite/SILICON anodes. But when you combine them with a lithium metal anode, the performance increases, almost doubling the best graphite/silicon energy density. And here is more clumsy science done by yours truly to try to explain why this is so. You are welcome! Essentially, smart scientists tell us that if we store lithium in a carbon-based material, then it takes six carbon atoms to hold one lithium ion.

But if you use an anode made of pure lithium metal, then you'll effectively remove all that bulky carbon and get an even lighter, higher energy-dense battery cell. The only slight drawback, aside from the obvious concern about global lithium supply, is that lithium metal anodes are really good at forming those pesky dendrites I mentioned earlier, which means they simply don't work in lithium-ion batteries. with liquid electrolytes. BUT, if you can make a solid electrolyte robust enough to resist dendrite growth, while doing all the other things you want it to do, then you've surely hit the jackpot, right?

That's why developers have been trying to find that solid material for the last four decades or so. And that brings us neatly to a new American company called Quantumscape, which is a name I'm sure most of you good people will already know well. They're arguably one of the most vocal and talked about solid state developers in the industry, and I think it's fair to say they've had something of a rollercoaster ride since their inception in '21. To really confuse the issue, they are working on something called a semi-solid state battery. There is no anode in your system.

Instead, you get a lithium-based cathode with an electrical contact below it and a solid-state ceramic separator with an electrical contact above it. As the battery charges, lithium exits the cathode, through the atomic lattice of the non-porous ceramic separator, and deposits between the top of the separator and the top electrical contact, effectively forming a new anodic layer of lithium metal. pure. So, as this QuantumScape animation suggests, you get the same energy in a much smaller space compared to the standard lithium-ion setup located on the left side. Now this is where the 'semi-solid' bit comes into play. According to the FAQ page on their own website, "QuantumScape combines this solid-state ceramic separator with an organic liquid electrolyte for the cathode.

It requires high conductivity, high voltage stability, and the ability to make good contact with the particle of cathode active material. It is difficult to find materials that meet both requirements and attempts to do so often result in a material that does not meet either requirement well.” such an impressive investment by VW, was that its technology would result in a fifty to eighty percent increase in the driving range of an electric vehicle, which translated into an increase from three hundred and fifty miles to six hundred and THIRTY miles with the same size battery Despite some recent encouraging comments from VW's battery testing subsidiary PowerCo, QuantumScape has struggled to reach these figures or scale up its technology to real production volumes, so it has had to. manage expectations a little in recent months.

Their website now cites a vehicle range improvement of between fourteen and forty-three percent, bringing a three-hundred-fifty-mile battery to between four-hundred and five-hundred miles. A regulatory filing filed by QuantumScape in October 2023 with the US Securities and Exchange Commission clarified that the company had not met the commercialization milestones outlined in its agreement with VW and that, therefore, the manufacturer of German automobiles had the right to terminate the joint venture. if you decide so. And sure enough, according to this Reuters report from January 224, VW has tested the search for alternative manufacturers of solid-state batteries, reportedly focusing on a well-established French company called Blue Solutions, which already produces solid-state batteries. -Batteries in good condition for Daimler electric buses.

The challenge THEY bring to the table is that their batteries currently take four hours to charge, which is fine if your vehicle is parked at a bus station overnight, but not so great if you're on the way to your 90th birthday. aunt. party and you're already half an hour late. A spokesperson for Blue Solutions told Reuters that he was working on a car battery with a 20-minute charging time, and that his goal was to build a "gigafactory" to manufacture those batteries by the 29th. But everyone says that, right? Meanwhile, Japanese giant Toyota, which had just bid farewell to longtime EV boss and arch-nemesis Akio Toyoda on January 22-23, has now enthusiastically joined the race for EV dominance.

The company claims to have made a breakthrough in solid-state battery technology, enabling a range of more than seven hundred and fifty miles and a charging time of ten minutes, although nothing close to what could be achieved so far has been achieved. describe as "detail". been communicative. Anyway, having promised these batteries for the twenty-first and then the twenty-third, Toyota now says they will produce the cells in scale for the twenty-seven or twenty-eight, which probably means twenty. -twenty-nine or twenty-thirty. South Korean auto giant Hyundai is also there in the mix, working with US firm Solid Power on a solid-state battery setup that they say includes materials that can withstand not only high temperatures, but also very low temperatures, which I'm sure they will be good news for those who live in colder climates like Canada.

They also addressed one of the potential problems with solid-state technology, which is the tendency of solid materials to expand and contract with large temperature changes, which in turn can cause damaging cracks in the battery structure. Hyundai's system uses a fluid to apply constant pressure to each cell during charging and discharging to prevent deformation and maintain good contact surface and conductivity between the electrodes and the solid electrolyte. Sensors inside the battery monitor temperature, pressure andvoltage, and an external controller regulates everything and updates the vehicle or charging device accordingly. Hyundai doesn't give specific production timelines, but its press release states that "Hyundai Motor Group is accelerating the development of next-generation batteries, including solid-state batteries, with the goal of producing 3.64 million electric

vehicles

by 2030." Then there's CHINESE automaker Nio, which has been developing its own solid-state SEMI battery for several years with its sister company WeLion.

On November 23, Nio CEO William Li livestreamed a fourteen-hour, six-hundred-and-fifty-mile road trip along the coast of China from Shanghai to Xiamen, in a Nio ET7 sedan, apparently powered by a version of one hundred and fifty kilowatt hours from the new battery. To give some context, a standard one hundred and fifty kilowatt hour lithium-ion battery in the Rivian R1t pickup offers a range of four hundred and ten miles. Li was apparently quoted as saying, "This battery is currently the battery pack with the highest energy density in mass production in the world and has excellent safety performance." Nio reportedly received its first shipment of batteries from WeLion in June '23. and true mass production will begin on April twenty-fourth.

You may also have heard of a company called ProLogium Technology, based just across the water from mainland China, in Taiwan. ProLogium has focused on research, development and manufacturing of solid-state batteries since 2006 and the company is arguably closer to the market than any of its competitors. It has patented technologies that supposedly allow a full charge in about twelve minutes and a driving range of up to a thousand kilometers, something that again we will have to take literally until we see reality. Although that may not be that far away. ProLogium already has an automated pilot production line that has produced nearly eight thousand sample solid-state battery cells for automakers around the world for testing and module development.

In January 222, ProLogium reached a multimillion-dollar deal with Mercedes Benz with a view to adding solid-state batteries to its vehicle range in the second half of this decade. And in year two twenty-three, the company announced an investment of five point two billion euros in a new purpose-built manufacturing plant in France, with mass production expected to begin there in year two twenty-seven. Staying in Europe, a German company called High Performance Batteries, or HPB, also blew its own trumpet on October 2223, introducing what TI described as the world's first PRODUCTION READY solid-state battery. According to the company's elegant website, its batteries have been independently evaluated to achieve more than ten thousand charge cycles with minimal degradation, representing a fifty percent reduction in environmental impact compared to current ion technology. of lithium and maintain a higher conductivity at minus forty. degrees Celsius than conventional liquid electrolytes can reach at their optimal working temperature of plus sixty degrees Celsius.

No doubt the good folks at Volkswagen will be beating their way to your door soon enough, eh? There are a host of other companies around the world working tirelessly to find their own solutions to the solid-state battery conundrum, as you can see from all these logos I'm, rather pointlessly, scattering across your screen. However, one notable absentee from the frothy world of solid-state battery development, ironically, is Tesla Motors. I wonder if that tells us anything. I'll leave that question open to you, and as always, if you have any news, opinions, or real experience in the industry for this particular technology, why not jump into the comments section below and share your thoughts there?

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Have a great week and remember to just think. See you next week.