Featured Solid-state battery wars

I find the post above to be interesting in many ways. It justifies selling cars that are stuffed with half a ton of batteries as better than what they would have bought otherwise. " Even on dirty grids, they are close to the Prius, and far better than the cars most people are buying."

It asserts that people would not buy a cheap micro car with only two days of normal use per charge. As a former owner of an Austin American, I can say that there will be a market. Don't know how big that market would be, but people were buying the e-Smart for a while for a lot more than $25K.

But nothing in the post showed that Tesla really cares about the environment. I noted lots of excuses as to why the (acknowledged) "greenwashing" is OK but nothing to show that Tesla is doing anything beyond window dressing when it comes to being green itself.

 

You have yet to show how Tesla's cars are wasteful. Somehow, building efficient cars and factories isn't good for the environment, but you can't bother to show everyone the work to reach that conclusion. It seems just having a big battery is enough. Doesn't that make the Prius Prime more wasteful than the Prius?

People don't buy microcars in the US, or else the fortwo and iQ wouldn't have been cancelled. The best sales year for the fortwo moved 24.6k cars; that was before the ED was an option. When it was, the best years sold over 10k. Most were far lower than that. The best year for the Spark didn't reach 40k, and it doesn't have the speed and range limitations of the K27. If the goal is to help the environment, those type of numbers will do very little in a market of 17 million.

Smart U.S Sales Figures
Scion iQ US car sales figures
Chevrolet Spark US car sales figures

 

yeah, don't like it when that happens.

The only customer they need initially is investor vw group. Last year vw group sold almost half a million plug-ins. We know its not toyota who is going its own way with panasonic. I bet tesla (who has an employee sit on the board) but any or all of ford, gm, BMW, and Daimler could have requested samples. They all want to be able to buy if it works better, and keep an eye on vw group ;-) Hyundai is working with ionic materials for their solid state so I doubt quantumScape wants to get samples to them.

Here lies the problem, but it will be solved in time. Lion batteries are so inexpensive and reliable that solid state batteries need to get manufacturing down well to compete. It takes about 3 years from concept to production of a large scale battery factory so they would need to know what they need today to get large scale manufacturing up in that timetable. We could have commercial scale expensive solid state battery packs by then but a tiny percentage of the market.

Nio has said they will have a solid state option in their china market next year in a swappable pack. My guess is it will be expensive but they will subsidize it to test in a number of cars. If reliability sucks, it can be swapped out. Toyota is next most aggressive and probably already has prototype cars with its solid state but is waiting for the olympics to demo. They are talking about limited run of a car which might be considered commercial quantities in 2025. They are claiming charging in 10 minutes. I'm sure vw group and quantum scape could put out a thousands of an audi or porsche solid state vehicle in 2024, but it will be tough to get manufacturing up to produce 50K/year or more in that timeframe. Still quantumScape which has a high market valuation could start building the factory in hopes that they are doing it right.

Meanwhile in the traditional lion space CATL is building a big factory to supply tesla and hyundai with low priced lithium ion batteries for their lower priced battery packs likely at $100/kwh or less at the pack level or about $5.5K for 55 kwh pack. These are slower charging. On the higher end Panasonic was able to change chemistry to Get 5% more energy out of their 2170 cells with the same size and weight in the long range pack for model 3 and Y. They say they are testing chemistries with 25% more energy density. The model S plaid+ has a 520 mile range in a pack that really does not seem to take up that much room. Hyundai ioniq 5 with batteries from SK Innovation claims to charge 10%-80% (70% total) in 18 minutes that is not far from the 80% in 15 minutes quantumScape proposes and fast enough for most of us. Toyota claims around twice as fast or 10 minute charge.

I expect either lithium ion will continue to improve or their will be a switch over to solid state. Lots of solid state candidates but I would not expect a high volume car like the tesla model 3 or vw id.3 to use solid state until 2028 or later. It will depend on reliability and cost, and manufacturing has a number of problems to solve to get costs down. we could easily see lots of cell phones with solid state soon though.

 

Tesla? any company's cars are for profit ..... not charity or green - at their core - whether model 3 or prius, believe it or not. The difference between companies? Some build varying varieties of polluters, the other in question here? not so much. Again - the contingent of ev drivers that go solar, so they can charge completely clean at home continues to grow.
No matter how clean a Gasser is, it can't drive around completely pollution free - once the ice kicks on. That's not meant to be a judgment, just the laws of physics.
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@hill, if you go back in the thread, the part you are quoting is in response to the assertion that Musk's motivation is altruistic, even though his actions don't reflect those values.

Somewhere on the net a guy named Darell documented his experience with an EV1, RAV4-EV and an electric Ford Ranger back in the early 2000s. He was charging his cars from solar in 2003. evnut.com

Dan

 

Stating Musk would be fine with someone buying a BEV over a Tesla isn't a statement that he is altruistic.

As for the OP/T, solid state batteries(which are still lithium based) show promise, but they are just starting to get out of the lab. Any cars with them in the next couple of years will just be test beds for the battery; including Nio's, as you can only get the solid state battery through their battery leasing plan.

If they do move out of the testing phrase, it will be years before they displace wet Li-ion from cars, because of simple logistics. Solid Power claims their solid state battery can be made on existing Li-ion manufacturing equipment. that can give them an edge in getting to production in mass quantities and lower price. Any novel production techniques and equipment will mean longer time to market, and higher initial price.

Wet Li-ion is going to be in cars for a long time. Not every car application needs solid state's advantages, and Li-ion will have a cost and recylcability advantage for some time after solid state's introduction.

 

yes i met him in Detroit when Totota sent ~2 dozen of us Prius Owner/Fanatics to the GenIII pre reveal before the auto show. He - DOES like his beer

like several from that early group he's now driving a Tesla. Late 1990's here at Disney we had a fleet of the S10 EV's that were using the same guts as the ev1. Originally purchased only for lease, some of the S10's did get sold off to the public. Eventually the nickel metal hydride batteries gave up the ghost. Hopefully the solid state batteries will eclipse all of our earlier chemistry's.
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A 'wet' LiON powered EV bought today will be worn out and ready for replacement when solid-state battery EVs can be bought.

Bob Wilson

 

That's really what it comes down too... We need a way to keep our existing vehicle for 20-30 years in a way that there's plenty of options to upgrade to new battery technology while keeping the old vehicle. This is way less resource intensive than forcing people to constantly upgrade to a new vehicle once the existing vehicle's battery technology gets outdated.

That's why I'm a big fan of @jacktheripper 's efforts to bring Lithium replacement packs for NiMH vehicles.

 

These claims that the others haven't solved any of the problems seem to all be coming from QuantumScape. We don't really have any unbiased sources here. Though someone in another thread just pointed out that Toyota is also working with a company with a lot of experience in ceramics that produces capacitors.

What we do know is that the others appear to be moving to production for vehicle testing before QS.

Capacitors got me thinking that wet Li-ion isn't solid states only competition. Development of hybrid(or Li-ion) ultracapacitors has been going on. These combine the best features, and reduce the negatives, from capacitors and batteries.

 

Solid power's most likely candidate uses a sulfide separator. They have created a 22 layer 20ah cell in December, its best promotion is it can use common battery making equipment so ramping manufacturing should be fast. It is slower charging than the other solid state chemistries about 4C, while it can discharge fast at 5C. No idea on cost.

Nio has been pretty mum about what they really are doing as well as being the most aggressive in terms of timeline. We don't even know who with be making the batteries for them but speculation is on CATL. Only real data we have is 360 Wh/kg. This compares to quantum scapes 350 wh/kg (and claim to pathway to 600 wh/kg) good to -30C, and solid powers 330 wh/kg with promises to 400 wh/kg good to -10C next year and samples then to car makers. This compares to tesla panasonic which are at 268 wh/kg with tesla claiming to have 300 wh/kg (probably using some of the maxwell technology) in the lab. Weight of the pack includes other things so solid cells won't save that much but if they don't need cooling that extra weight may go down. Since automotive should work down to -40C, all the solid state batteries will need some sort of heating, and heating will likely improve recharge time. Store Dot with uses nano technology in its lion batteries claims the fastest charge rate of 80% in 5 minutes. I expect that to be in phones soon and we will see cycle life.

Academically the work at University of Texas with Goodenough one of the nobel prize winners for his work in creation of the lion battery seem very promising. He is working with Maria Bragga on glass electrolytes and a ceramic electrolytes that may be self healing and allow use of sodium instead of lithium. Hydro Quebec is the partner for testing and manufacturing. He is also working with Hadi Khani on a Gel Polymer electrolyte that SK Innovation is working on to commercialize. I'm sure his these and other professors are taking the lead but Goodenough is still brilliant at 98 years old.

 

Well, I have been searching and buying battery cells for the past 5 years and there is this Taiwanese company actually selling solid state battery:


ProLogium Technology Co., Ltd. 輝能科技股份有限公司


Great Scout's testing video:

I actually have one of their cell and it works great, but just too expensive for most of the application out there, including EV/hybrid replacement..

Jack

 

So in other words you're saying solid-state still lives in the land of pretend... And they might be real enough to start talking about major funding, but right now it's kind of like the people who've always dreamed of opening up a restaurant and the pandemic makes the investment look more like a bargain than it used to be. Of course the odds are probably way worse for a new battery technology startup.

 

Samsung made a similar claim.