Solid-State Battery Has 2x the Energy–and No Anode
Comments
mabbo
Tagbert
Lithium ion batteries are not a single technology and are not static. There are periodic changes that improve the batteries in various dimensions. They are constantly evolving. At the same time, it is perfectly feasible for EVs to switch to alternate chemistries a construction methods. Individual vehicles might not switch but a manufacturer could switch their product line to start using sodium or sulphur or whatever new chemistry comes along.
This Ars story talks about the ongoing improvements to battery tech… https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/eternally-five-years...
cptskippy
You're right and so is the OP.
Lithium based batteries of varying chemistries collectively in space that few other battery chemistries overlap.
phkahler
Actually, energy storage by weight is not as big a deal for electric cars. Regenerative braking can recover most of a vehicles kinetic energy, which is where the weight dependent energy goes. This is why several hybrids get better fuel economy in city driving than highway, the biggest losses are due to aero which increases nonlinearly with speed.
Otherwise yes, it's important to find something better without sacrificing on any of those metrics.
PragmaticPulp
Heavier cars are more dangerous in collisions.
The extra weight of a big battery requires a bigger frame to carry it, bigger suspension, wider tires, and so on.
I’m not really happy that some of these monster EVs are approaching 10,000lbs with fast 0-60 times. It’s like a kinetic missile that can reach a momentum capable of obliterating your average 3000lb compact car in under 5 seconds.
lazide
That is pretty much the definition of moving the goal posts?
TaylorAlexander
Actually if I follow the conversation, the first person said “storage density matters”. The second person said “actually it does not because the energy gets recovered”. The follow up said “actually there are other reasons why weight is a problem.”
So the first person never set goal posts around efficiency, that was an assumption by the second person. The first person could always have meant that the collision risks from heavier vehicles are higher, while the second person misunderstood their meaning. No moving of goalposts here.
jgtrosh
There can be multiple reasons for heavy cars to be bad. Additionally, extra heavy cars wear roads much faster.
It's nice to have a way of recuperating energy but it doesn't solve everything.
_a_a_a_
They didn't say it solved everything
entropicgravity
In the not too distant future cities will ban large vehicles EV and ICE from the downtown core. The automotive market will then split into small city cars and bigger highway cars. In the city core roads will be covered (because no poisonous exhaust gases).
subarctic
>Regenerative braking can recover most of a vehicles kinetic energy
I used to think that was the case, but then i think i read somewhere that it only recovers 20% of the kinetic energy. Can't find it anymore though
mikeyouse
Like OP mentioned, the efficiency of recovery varies by speed but is generally in the 65%-80% range for total round-trip (the system captures ~80% of the kinetic energy but with round-trip losses, you only get ~80% of that energy to propel the car).
Maybe you're thinking of the total range boost provided by regen braking? That's often shown to be roughly 20% via studies;
https://sci-hub.se/10.1109/vppc.2011.6043109
> Simulations show that the energy reduction of the vehicles under test can be more than 20% by applying regenerative braking.
It's an older study, but they show the regen efficiency at 60% for the EcoTruck and 70% for the bus.
hutzlibu
It is basic physic.
There is all the time friction of air and the road. You can never recover that.
And in rare cases where you actually can recover energy, at non emergency slowing down, it is probably indeed in that ballpark, wich is something(especially in city with stop and go), but not very high or much. With very high tech, you can increase that number a bit, but not worth the effort. Electric cars need good batteries and every improvement there is good.
satiric
It depends a lot on how you drive. If you do a lot of hard braking, the car will have to use a lot of friction braking. If you slow down more gradually, the car can just use regen which is gonna be pretty efficient.
simplotek
Still, I'm not sure OP's train of thought holds. Mass matters because you need to spend energy to accelerate it and move it uphill. Regenerative breaking does not have 100% efficiency. Therefore, energy losses are proportional to weight. Also, isn't tire drag proportional to weight? That's a energy sink that can't be recovered by breaking.
magnuspaaske
As with anything else it depends what you optimise for and at the most basic level the car uses the engines to accelerate at all speeds but might need to use break pads at slow speeds.
feifan
I've seen data showing ~70% recovery on a Model 3, but I also can't find the source :/
DennisP
Here are the specs on the Amprius silicon-anode battery, currently shipping in low volume:
That's better on all the metrics you listed except cost, which it doesn't mention. Whatever their current cost is, it should drop significantly once they complete their factory in 2025.
Most of the battery is standard lithium-ion, the anode is a drop-in replacement.
tromp
It mentions lasting for 200-1200 cycles, which (besides a suspiciously large range compared to Li-ion's 500-1000 cycles) is not better on all mentioned metrics.
DennisP
The above comment didn't mention cycles but I should have said "similar or better." Cycles are comparable, seems likely it's just more sensitive to poor management. With about twice the capacity, fewer cycles are more tolerable anyway.
In any case, this looks like a very practical battery with serious advantages over lithium-ion.
Kye
If it's like Li-Ion, that's full discharge and charge cycles, not every top off. So if these batteries are sufficiently higher capacity, it might make up for the difference. 200+ charges is enough if each charge lasts 2x longer or more.
ksec
If you have double the energy capacity and the same cycle. Your phone will also last roughly double the time at the same energy usage. That is probably good enough for most things.
entropicgravity
These batteries will target the aviation market which will be willing to pay much more than the automotive segment. EV's need a certain weight for safety and once a battery pack goes lower than that weight the incentive for buying lighter batteries quickly fades.
DennisP
Starting with aviation while they're at low volume makes sense. But most EVs weigh more than the equivalent gasoline cars, and have shorter range than many people are comfortable with, so I think there's plenty of opportunity for silicon-anode batteries in cars.
Personally I'd like to drive an EV 400 miles to visit my brother without stopping to charge, which realistically requires at least a 500-mile range, preferably 600 (so 80% to 20% is about 400). Charging time of less than ten minutes would make that less important to me, and conveniently, these batteries provide that too.
panick21_
Amprius technology will not magically drop in price as much as people think. Some manufacturing methods don't just scale and become cheap.
Their large facility planned is still tiny in terms of battery factories.
This will remain an expensive niche product.
DennisP
No small company is going to suddenly build a gigafactory. But 5GWh, if they manage it, is not that small. One of Tesla's gigafactories is 37GWh.
uoaei
Different battery designs and chemistries are appropriate for different applications. I don't care about how much a battery weighs if it never moves, for example.
alkonaut
The powerwall use case will only grow when people get solar panels and when rural areas in countries lacking power infrastructure eletrify. But while that use case doesn't care as much about weight, bulk, charge rate and % capacity as car batteries, in return they are very sensitive to cost and the market will (depending on how cheaply recycling can be done) likely be filled with used car-batteries with degraded capacity.
If you invent a battery that is 2x as large and heavy as current vehicle batteries but half the cost, then you might think you would be able to sell them for stationary storage, but you are then competing with the price of second hand vehicle batteries which may well be half price already.
sorenjan
One drawback of using lots of lithium batteries in your home is that they might experience thermal runaway and burn your house down. Not having to worry about that should have some additional value.
RRRA
Most new solar installations now use LiFePO4 which apparently is much safer on that runaway side...
sorenjan
That's good, but is that what's used in "used car-batteries with degraded capacity"?
samtho
Used car batteries are conventional unsealed, lead-acid batteries. Lithium-iron-phosphate (aka LiFePO4, LFP) batteries is a different battery chemistry altogether. It is touted as the answer to a deep-cycle, lithium-based electrical storage that the traditional lead acid batteries occupy.
xsmasher
I think they mean used EV batteries - EV batteries that are at the end of their useful life in cars.
samtho
That makes more sense.
BirAdam
Also way better cycle life, but the density is slightly lower.
bluGill
True (within limits), but the largest use of batteries is batteries that move. Utility scale power storage is the only significant use of battery that doesn't move. (there are others, but they are not probably large enough to develop a battery for, and so will be stuck with whatever they can get from the other markets)
sanderjd
Yes, but stationary energy storage is itself a large use case.
There are also different performance profiles within EVs, where different tradeoffs might make sense. Though, like you, I'm somewhat skeptical that any non-lithium chemistries will break through in that space.
mabbo
I'm of two minds on this.
On the one hand, you're right that for different applications having different metrics can be acceptable. Sure, a battery for your home that never moves can be heavy and large and that's okay.
But then you have to consider the economics of production. How many of those batteries will you make? What will the factory for them cost to build? And what would it cost instead to just make a bunch more Li-Ion batteries at the existing factory instead?
uoaei
Some of the more exotic battery designs are things like "rust powder held in a silo at a certain temperature" which presumably can be assembled on-site. It seems to me overly reductive to assume that stationary batteries will be "just mobile batteries but heavier".
tasty_freeze
Your logic makes sense if there is only one battery factory. But there are and will be many.
Retric
Economies of scale still apply with multiple factories because you need someone to design and build the equipment used at each of them.
worik
Where do flow batteries (fuel cells) fit in those calculations?
Feloevo
There is already a car which uses two battery technologies in parallel.
This would also allow you to configure or offer cars optimized for the climate they are being used.
I personally also see those news more in 'im 5-10 years' we will have something much better than now.
kungito
Which car? You cannot drop something like this without a source
raddan
I’m sure this is not what the poster meant, but in fact most EVs and hybrids use multiple battery technologies in parallel. For example, a Chevy Bolt has a lithium ion battery to power the drivetrain and a conventional lead-acid battery for the accessories. My old Prius had a NiMH battery for the drivetrain and a lead-acid battery for accessories.
londons_explore
A lead acid battery is just a holdover from the way every car used to have one for the accessories, and unless you want to redesign all the accessories, it's easier to have a 12v-14v circuit just for that.
And before you say "oh, but they could just use a voltage converter from the high voltage battery", they need to consider that some accessories use hundreds of amps briefly (eg. the power steering - that makes for an expensive voltage converter), and the car still needs to operate lights and stuff while the high voltage battery is offline (eg. after an isolation fault).
For all of the above reasons, the lead acid battery is still there, even though a clean sheet design would never have one.
entropicdrifter
My Hyundai Ioniq hybrid has a 12v section of the Li-ion battery that can be charged off of the hybrid battery while the car is off with the press of a button so that the car never needs to be jump-started unless the entire hybrid battery is dead.
rbanffy
> For example, a Chevy Bolt has a lithium ion battery to power the drivetrain and a conventional lead-acid battery for the accessories.
This seems like an odd choice - unless you already bought a supply of lead-acid batteries for the next 50 years or so.
I've read about a car using supercapacitors in the regenerative brakes to capture energy at high current and, then let it trickle back into the main batteries (or drivetrain) at levels that won't damage it.
Retric
This is a classic, it isn’t broken don’t fix it situation.
Many laptops had both a lithium ion battery and a watch battery used to keep the bios and an internal clock running after the battery died. https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/why-does-my-motherboard-have-a...
Someone
That was a bit of a necessity. Users wouldn’t want their clock to reset when they swapped batteries, and you couldn’t be sure the machine was connected to a time server to set the time at boot.
JohnClark1337
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briffle
It could be great if you were a car manufacturer that already had an existing, very large supply chain for lights, dashboard, powered window motors, and other accessories, that were already 12 volt.
rbanffy
But unless you have a already contracted lifetime supply of lead-acid batteries, a buck converter is much cheaper, and lighter.
sorenjan
Tesla switched from lead-acid to 12V lithium ion their S and X models in 2021. James May had some issues with his Tesla when the 12V battery went flat.
https://insideevs.com/news/546087/tesla-liion-12v-auxiliary-...
jandrese
Tesla is also switching to 48V for the accessories.
dreamcompiler
This was the best news I heard at Tesla investor day. It should simplify and cut the cost of the in-cabin wiring.
When Sandy Munro interviewed Elon Musk a couple of years ago he said "Why are you still using 12v stuff in the cabin?"
Musk's answer was that the automotive supply chain was entirely geared around 12v equipment and they had to take advantage of that to get to market quickly.
I'm glad those days are almost over.
robocat
Isn’t there a whole trucking supply chain geared around 24 Volts?
rbanffy
All it'd take is a middle terminal in a 24V battery to make it a 12/24V one.
robocat
That would run the risk of unbalanced batteries. I had a small truck years ago, and everything was 24V as far as I recall.
xxs
The 12v lane is ubiquitous, and standardized. Supercaps are inefficient when it comes to storage per weight and volume, discharge rate too.
Both lead acid and supercaps are not even remotely comparable to the main liion battery, they're suppliments, and not interesting ones
rbanffy
The supercaps aren't for long-term storage - just long enough to allow the extra juice to flow back to the batteries. Racing cars sometimes do that with flywheels.
As for 12V, all one needs is a regulator. Unless you have a long-term supply contract (that, I bet, won't be renewed for too long), a lead-acid battery is just dead weight.
panick21_
I don't think that is what this person is talking about. Yes having an extra lower voltage battery is totally normal and every EV either has a led acid or an additional smaller LiIon battery.
Having multiple chemistries in one battery pack is of course possible, but I don't any car who is actually doing that.
Feloevo
Can't find it on the fly.
I read about it a few month back but ev battery and types etc. Shows a lot of other topics.
Might have been Tesla when they announced the other cell type.
dheera
Those are only a few metrics. Li-ion is not fantastic in (a) charging cycles and battery depletion or (b) fire safety.
It also depends a lot on use case; for example, for home electricity storage (like a PowerWall) I would gladly give up energy density for safety. If there's some battery tech that can handle 50000 charge cycles and completely non-flammable but weighs 100 tons and has 10% of the energy density of Lithium, I'd gladly make that trade. Maybe build part of the building out of it.
megaman821
How often will you fully cycle a home battery? At 100 cycles a year it would take 50 years to deplete a 5,000 cycle battery down to 80%. Another 50 years before it was 50%. There is no way the casing would be fully intact and the electronics even be functioning after that long.
Current LFP batteries should last multiple decades as a home battery. The already have low flammability. The price is getting more affordable. They could just be part standard of a home electric system in a decade or two, like a whole-home surge protector.
dheera
> The already have low flammability.
Low rates of spontaneous thermal runaway, sure, but they still are extremely flammable if externally ignited or physically damaged. A house fire that could otherwise be put out might turn into a full disaster. An earthquake that physically damages the battery pack could cause a fire that would have otherwise not happened. A flood or minor tsunami might allow for early evacuations and most lives saved, but now the entire town is on fire instead of just water damaged, if every house has a massive lithium pack in their basement.
eknkc
I guess LTO is right there at the moment. Even LiFePo4 batteries are a lot more safer than Li-Ion ones. From what I’ve seen, I would gladly have a LTO pack in my house.
brightball
The only one that I'm actively monitoring is this one because it handles the other metrics AND gives a path forward to rapid charging, which is the core requirement to displace liquid fuels. IMO any battery advance that doesn't address rapid charging is going to fall to the wayside for exactly the reason you stated.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltaylor/2021/05/13/ev-ran...
cryptoegorophy
As well as battery charge cycles
scythe
Particularly relevant for this particular battery, because the authors seem to think it's impressive that they had 80% capacity retention after 50 cycles. No, I didn't forget a zero. That's 50, not 500 or 5000. It may be an improvement on other Li-metal anodes, but it's still orders of magnitude away from being stable enough for practical use.
I'm not sure if the paper is open access or if my library is automatically logging me in again, but the cycling behavior is shown in Figure S18 of the Supporting Information here, page 12:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/downloadSupplement?do...
infogulch
And shock tolerance, and temperature tolerance, and i/o efficiency
Tade0
Solid state might share the fate of Betamax.
There was a post a while ago about a small scale battery manufacturer named Amprius, which reported 500Wh/kg batteries:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35276709
Thing is, the company is producing 450Wh/kg batteries NOW and they're planning on scaling up their manufacturing capacity to 5GWh:
https://www.convertingquarterly.com/ConvertingQuarterly/Indu...
This solid state news piece is exiting, but the real revolution is happening in the background, with LFP achieving decent densities without sacrificing cost or longevity and silicon anode batteries reaching large-scale commercialization as we speak.
jackmott42
EVs are already very heavy, and when the model 3 switched to LFP it got even heavier. This mass has lots of subtle consequences that aren't always appreciated. Like accelerated tire wear (which Tesla owners notice after they buy) and increased particulate pollution from that, increased road wear, increased danger to pedestrians and cyclists, etc.
So, I'm less excited about LFP. There are a number of ideas in the works that might double the energy density over the current leading lithium ion chemistries and if any of them work out its going to unlock a lot a things that don't quite work yet like:
1. light weight sports car EVs (like a miata) 2. EVs that can tow things or carry 4 mountain bikes on road trips 3. Some aircraft 4. EVs that can do a track day for a reasonable amount of time 5. EVs that are lighter than ICE counterparts rather than heavier
wffurr
Wh/Kg is the relevant metric to optimize though. Whether it’s LFP or solid state doesn’t matter. If that company is building higher density LFP batteries, that addresses every concern you mention.
jackmott
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seppler
Before my Model 3, I had a BMW M3. Curb weights were the same (2009 BMW M3 vs 2018 Model 3 LR RWD). Even comparing a 2020 Model 3 AWD vs. a 2020 BMW M3, curb weights are about the same (~4000lbs).
ericpauley
I’ll know we’ve made it when you can buy a 1000kg EV Miata.
Feloevo
Independent of this, this also gives more and.better options for the energy grid in general.
And economy of scale: if we can produce it, the chance that we can scale it might only be a question of few years.
newZWhoDis
> increased danger to pedestrians and cyclists, etc.
Why do seemingly so people here understand clipping functions?
The lethality of a pedestrian-vehicle collision with a 4,000lb vehicle at 60MPH and a 400,000lb vehicle at 60MPH are both 1
In practical terms, the additional weight of an EV has zero effect on pedestrian collision lethality, whereas something like bumper design would.
AlotOfReading
I'm not sure why clipping functions are relevant, because the probability of death isn't 100% even for semis hitting pedestrians at highway speeds. It's actually more like 80-90%. There's still quite a bit of long tail for higher speeds beyond that as well. SUVs and other "heavy" consumer vehicles are somewhere in the 75% range at comparable speeds, while sedans are down around 65% mortality. Feel free to find your own numbers, but I'm using [1]. Vehicle weight and size clearly have a significant effect on mortality even at high speeds.
However, not all collisions are at highway speed. Most collisions are at relatively low speed, where weight is an even more significant factor in the energy involved. There are tradeoffs you can make between weight contributed by safety equipment (e.g. bumpers), but to a large extent those tradeoffs are mandated by regulations rather than consumers or OEM engineers.
[1] https://www.moneygeek.com/insurance/auto/analysis/pedestrian... [2] https://www.nber.org/digest/nov11/vehicle-weight-and-automot...
meatmanek
Vehicle mass matters a lot in vehicle-to-vehicle collisions, where the energy and momentum of each vehicle is going to change a lot, but when a car collides with a person, the car's momentum is barely affected, because the car is already significantly more massive than the person. A 20x mass ratio is already practically infinite.
In a direct collision between a moving 1000kg car going 10 m/s and a stationary 50kg person, the person will end up moving somewhere between 9.5 m/s (perfectly inelastic collision) and 19.05 m/s (perfectly elastic). The car will end up moving 9.5 m/s (perfectly inelastic) and 9.05 m/s (perfectly elastic).
In a direct collision between a moving 10000kg car going 10 m/s and a stationary 50kg person, the person will end up moving 9.95 m/s (perfectly inelastic) and 19.90 m/s (perfectly elastic). The car will end up moving somewhere between 9.95 m/s (perfectly inelastic) and 9.90 m/s (perfectly elastic).
Even though we 10x'd the weight of the car, we only increased the velocity of the person after impact by about 5%, and energy imparted on the person by about 10%.
I suspect vehicle size (or rather, the size/shape of the front of the vehicle) has way more effect on pedestrian survivability than the weight of the vehicle. SUVs and trucks will impart the force of impact directly to your torso and head, and then subsequently run you over. Sedans hit you in the legs and then roll you over the top of the vehicle.
GaryNumanVevo
Higher curb weight correlates with longer breaking distances
jillesvangurp
You are right. The company you mention is focusing on the aviation industry. Drones and light airplanes. Weight matters a lot there. To the point where saving weight is worth a lot to manufacturers.
Basically every kilo you save is more useful load and range. It's also a very conservative market. Most of the planes in the process of being certified, or already certified (like the Pipistrel trainer) are using batteries that are quite unimpressive in terms of wh/kg. That's because the technology is typically at least half a decade old by the time a plane gets through the certification process.
Manufacturers can't just switch battery supplier without triggering a lot of re-certification activity and most of them would have locked in their supplier many years ago; long before even starting the certification process.. It's their next models that are being designed now that would get something that is state of the art now. Like this battery. We won't see those in the market until 6-7 years from now.
The exception to this is probably going to be experimental aircraft. I think that should become a growth market pretty soon. A 500wh/kg battery of say 100kwh would weigh about 200 kilos, give or take. That should get you some usable range and be light enough to put in a small plane. And it would put a nice little dent in the cost of what used to be a 100$ hamburger flight. Fuel cost is high and planes use a lot of it. 5-10 gallons per hour typically. And combustion engine maintenance on planes is very expensive. All that goes away with battery electric. Servicing becomes a lot simpler, less moving parts that can break and the few remaining ones last a lot longer.
Irresistible for a lot of private pilots, I would imagine. This is a market that doesn't currently exist but I don't think it should take long for people to start experimenting with battery electric.
gpm
Manned airplanes are a conservative market, I would imagine that unmanned drones are not? Especially cheap consumer ones?
MrsPeaches
Who’s the current market leader on EV private pilot planes?
jillesvangurp
Cessna I guess.They bought Pipistrel recently. There are a few companies getting closer to production with various planes and drones. But realistically, I think volume sales is still a few years out.
Companies like Amprius scaling their high end battery production (like they announced recently) is interesting though.
darksaints
Cessna didn’t buy Pipistrel, Textron did. Maybe that’s being pedantic, but Cessna has zero development going on in the electric plane space, and Pipistrel still runs almost completely independent of the other brands in Textron’s portfolio.
rch
No idea who the technology leader might be, but I hear about Joby most frequently.
ngrilly
Some applications still require higher energy densities than what LFP can provide. Are you saying silicon anodes are more promising than solid state for those applications?
Tade0
My position is as follows:
-LFP wins on price where it fits the use case, so grid storage, current-gen EVs.
-Silicon anode competes for market share with solid-state in areas where LFP can't, namely aerospace and next-gen EVs or even aviation, should they ever reach 1kWh/kg. The former has easily a decade lead considering that they're already selling packs and the latter exists largely in the lab or on paper.
I also believe even 400Wh/kg at pack level is already good enough to be a serious proposition as replacement for internal combustion in land transportation, provided pricing is adequate.
ngrilly
I totally agree with your position on LFP, and about 400 Wh/kg being enough to unlock some applications.
But I’m not fully convinced on silicon anodes versus solid state. Yes, energy density is very promising, but I understand capacity fade is still a huge problem due to silicon volume expansion/reduction while charging/discharging?
Tade0
That's the problem they've solved here using nanowires - the cells have a 200-1200 cycle life depending on operating conditions - I suppose the range is so wide because of the temperature range - -30°C - 55°C. It's not surprising to see cells degrade fast at the hotter end of this spectrum.
For EVs they advertise cells with no less than 410Wh/L, 4C rate of discharge.
naasking
Is there still a fire risk with LFP? From my understanding, solid state batteries have a large safety advantage here because of this.
Tade0
Yes - LFP still uses a flammable, liquid electrolyte - usually ethylene carbonate.
That being said LFP survives the nail penetration test without causing a fire, so it's considerably safer than the usual alternatives.
panick21_
LFP cathodes and silicon or 'solid state' aka lithium metal anodes are not incompatible.
danbruc
5 GWh in what time? Gigafactory 1 was at 30 GWh per year in 2019 and they planned to ramp up to 54 GWh, according to Wikipedia. So probably per year? Which would make their production capacity 570 kW. Also according to Wikipedia, a production of 35 GWh per year which is 4 MW was estimated to require 300 MW of energy input.
seszett
What is the point of comparing 300 MW energy use for production with 35 GWh/year (which is technically 4MW indeed) new battery capacity though?
These are technically the same units, but they don't measure the same things.
danbruc
I find that comparison quite interesting with respect to the energy intensity of producing lithium ion batteries. A factory that can produce two oil barrels per hour or seven 60 liter gasoline tanks per hour or will also produce 35 GWh storage capacity per year and would probably not consume anywhere close to 300 MW in the process.
IshKebab
They measure comparable things. The ratio is how many times you would have to discharge the battery to output enough energy to manufacture the battery. It's the capacity independent measure of embodied energy. An important metric.
Tade0
> Which would make their production capacity 570 kW.
I understand where you got this number, but I would rather stick to units which are easy to interpret.
Yes, 5GWh per year or 570kW - in a sense.
Feloevo
Energy input can be green.
If not now, at least doable.
ngrilly
Why is it called anode-free when it still has a copper collector with a special coating? Yes, they removed the graphite, but they didn’t remote the entire “anode”. Or is it because the collector and the coating are not technically considered as an electrode?
ndsipa_pomu
I initially thought this was an early April Fool's joke in a different time zone to me. It does sound to me like they're replacing the traditional anode with a different anode.
eurekin
They missed the opportunity to go "anodeless", like with the serverless
ngrilly
Sounds the same to me. A copper sheet coated with a thin layer of lithium-activated tellurium instead of a thicker layer of graphite. Not trying to diminish their achievement, but I don’t understand the anode-less claim.
danbruc
Technically speaking you can not get rid of the anode unless you also get rid of the cathode as anode and cathode switch places between charging and discharging. It is just by convention that in case of batteries the role while discharging is used, I would guess carried over from non-rechargeable batteries, but the anode would better be called the negative electrode.
pbhjpbhj
A battery with no poles would be a curious beast!
_nalply
I wondered about that too then I realized what an anodeless battery would really, literally mean: if you charge it, you pump electrons into it, so it gets somewhat electrically negative, and if you discharge it, you let the electrons flow out of it. To be pedantic, this is not really anodeless, this would be just a battery having only one electric contact switching roles between a cathode and an anode.
Then I started to wonder: what if this really could be done? I am afraid not, because you need two contacts to create a potential difference, don't you?
skupig
I think (?) that would work as long as your circuit is more negatively charged than your battery and has enough capacitance to keep current flowing- you just have to discharge it later. Maybe with a second, negatively-charged battery...
malfist
Forgive me if my EE knowledge is old and rusty, but isn't an anode required for a battery to function? You have to be able to harvest a voltage differential, and to do that you must have an anode and a cathode.
Perhaps they meant there wasn't an anode that gets degraded by use?
gt565k
I read an article somewhere that discusses how Toyota has the most battery patents out of any company and also owns most of the solid state patents and are actually working on commercializing solid state batteries for vehicles.
The point I think the article was trying to make is that while everyone is focused on lithium ion, Toyota was biding it’s time and getting ready to one-up everyone with solid state batteries and vehicles with double the range.
horseRad
I remember when people said Toyota would sweep in and crush EV:s with solid state batteries in 2020 (Even when they despised EV:s).
https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/25/toyotas-new-solid-state-ba...
pjc50
I'm not sure about Toyota, because up till now they've been hydrogen evangelists and they don't have a great record on pure battery EVs.
gonzo41
Well H2 is a hedge. It's a green-ish fuel and has potential as a replacement to lng for japan.
but more power to toyota. can't wait to get an electric hilux. hopefully it's cheap.
nordsieck
> Well H2 is a hedge. It's a green-ish fuel and has potential as a replacement to lng for japan.
Is it though? Can't be a hedge if it doesn't really work well fundamentally.
Although I'll admit to being largely ignorant of the Japanese car market.
IMO, it'd be much more practical to invest in automotive LNG tech and combine that with synthesizing LNG from the atmosphere (or at least developing the tech to do so).
Practically, both H2 and LNG are both "dirty", since H2 is made though natural gas reforming these days.
greggsy
H2 has the benefit of being much easier to store, transport and transfer than batteries. It’s able to be stored in small containers and large vessels of any shape. Batteries manufacturing is much more complex. Electricity needs to be transferred from a power station over wires, while hydrogen can be pumped into a vehicle from a bulk source.
Sure H2 is dangerous, but so is LNG, and petrol for that matter. 100+ years of accidents and safety controls means that even a drunk person smoking at the pump can (probably) fill their car up safely.
Japan has very poor carbon security, so LNG reforming might come with its own challenges, but they could generate it via electrolysis using nuclear or wind power, or import ammonia from future mega producers like Australia.
It’s very likely that global demand in the transport sector will tend towards H2, so they need to gear their industry towards that market.
somewhat_drunk
Nah.
I worked as a project engineer in a hydrogen fuel cell test lab for a few years. H2 is EXTREMELY hazardous. It can be ignited by a miniscule amount of energy (i.e. a tiny static spark will do it), and it has a very fast flame front, which creates an extremely energetic explosion. It's also the smallest molecule, so it's very difficult to prevent leakage, and it embrittles and degrades most steels over time. Additionally, proton exchange membrane fuel cells (the most common kind) are poisoned by anything NOT H2, so you can't add odorous agents to H2 to easily detect leaks, like we do with natural gas. H2's only non-dangerous characteristic is its high buoyancy, which means it dissipates quickly in outdoor environments, but in my opinion that is not sufficient to offset all of its other dangerous characteristics.
I would NEVER live in a building that had H2 stored inside (as in, inside a vehicle tank) or pumped in it, and I would definitely not trust the general public to use it safely.
It also has to be stored at either incredibly high pressures (as a gas) or incredibly cold temperatures (as a liquid), neither of which are conducive to large-scale, long-range transport.
But the worst part of H2 isn't how dangerous it is or how impractical it is; the worst part of H2 is how incredibly inefficient a hydrogen economy would be. See Paul Martin's excellent summary of H2 for a thorough debunking of the main H2 talking points.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/distilled-thoughts-hydrogen-p...
entropicgravity
All true. The real reason Toyota is interested in hydrogen is that it would maintain its current balance sheet.
Hydrogen would allow Toyota to swap one messy, expensive, heavy power plant requiring lots of maintenance (ie fuel cell) for ICE technology.
Whereas EV technology has almost no maintenance, a motor with one moving part and regenerative braking that means even the brakes last forever. The accountants at Toyota would definitely frown at that.
All the other car companies did the same calculations and said 'NO'. Lets just say we'll do that and keep kicking the can down the road for as long as possible.
Now, thanks to Tesla, the cat is out of the bag and the entire industry knows they'll need a new financial platform to survive in the future and no, hydrogen will not save their sorry butts.
nordsieck
> Whereas EV technology has almost no maintenance, a motor with one moving part and regenerative braking that means even the brakes last forever. The accountants at Toyota would definitely frown at that.
That doesn't seem right.
Of all the major brands, Toyota (and Lexus) is the most reliable. They are the opposite of planned obsolescence - they work hard to make their cars last for a very long time.
I suppose in the short term, that's a downside for them, but in the long term, their reputation for being extremely reliable pays off in multiple ways - more demand, higher residual value, etc.
I have no idea why the Japanese auto makers chased hydrogen so hard, but there as to be some other reason. Otherwise we would have seen declining reliability in their gas lineup before now.
somewhat_drunk
Agreed. I think Toyota embraced H2 not because they wanted to replace a complex ICE with a complex PEMFC, but because a) Japan has no oil or mineral reserves to speak of, and b) when they started down that path, battery tech was woefully inadequate. Now that we've seen that batteries can power passenger vehicles just fine, I think Toyota and the Japanese government are both stubbornly engaging in the sunk cost fallacy.
But the writing's on the wall: H2 is dead tech for passenger vehicles.
_hypx
Wrong. All cars will eventually have to move to hydrogen. This is due to the unsustainability of battery cars. A lot of the anti-Japan rhetoric here is bordering on racism. They are actually planning ahead. Western carmakers are short-sighted and not thinking past the next few quarters.
somewhat_drunk
Why is it so easy to spot the right winger these days?
Oh that's right, it's because you all parrot the same nonsense.
The valuable materials in EV batteries don't get used up - they're still in the battery, and can be recycled. We haven't figured out the particulars, but there's no reason why it can't be done. In fact, the biggest issue that battery recyclers are facing right now is a lack of batteries to recycle.
Stop swallowing propaganda wholesale. Start thinking for yourself.
_hypx
And what is hydrogen but fuel made from water? Far less raw materials than could ever be achieved with batteries. And you'll never have to mine it even once.
Seriously, the battery people act exactly like climate change deniers. An entire argument based on denying or obfuscating the problem, and pretending nothing better could ever exist.
Seriously, your whole post is projection.
somewhat_drunk
>And what is hydrogen but fuel made from water?
98% of H2 is made from fossil fuels.
You know why, right?
_hypx
So is the vast majority of electricity. Take away hydropower and nuclear, and it's something like 85%. Use to be 99% at one point.
somewhat_drunk
98% of H2 is made from fossil fuels because cracking water is very expensive.
H2 is already expensive when reformed from natural gas - you can expect to pay 20-30 cents per mile to travel in the most advanced, fuel efficient H2 vehicle out there.
https://www.hydrogeninsight.com/transport/exclusive-fresh-bl...
H2 made via electrolysis is a bit more than 3x that cost. Are you ready to pay $1 per mile to drive?
Of course, price generally declines with volume, so we could expect those numbers to come down if H2 were more widely adopted. But there is a thermodynamic floor on the cost of H2, which means that it will never be cost-competitive with pure electric vehicles.
https://medium.com/10x-curiosity/the-hydrogen-hopium-ea11c7a...
And then there's the complexity issue. As a former fuel cell engineer, I understand better than most how complex and finicky proton exchange membrane fuel cell systems are. They are easily poisoned, they're prone to freezing, they have long startup times, they require high-speed, expensive electric air compressors, and they have complex valving and sensors to ensure safe operation.
Purely electric vehicles simply do not have these problems. A battery and a motor is about as simple as a drivetrain can possibly be. EVs will always be fundamentally far simpler than FCEVs, which translates into a lower upfront vehicle cost.
You have no answer to these problems.
I suggest you stop furiously responding here and instead consider your biases, and reevaluate your position. Batteries are so much better than H2 for transportation on just about all fronts that the two are not even close to comparable. H2 at this point is a malicious distraction being foisted on the general public by oil companies attempting to stay relevant, and governments engaging in sunk cost fallacious thinking. The sooner fuel cells for transport (and H2 for heating) are relegated to history's dustbin, the better.
Oh, and as for your assertion that electricity sans nuclear and hydro is 85% fossil fuels... that's true... and irrelevant. 40% of electricity generated in the US today is renewable, and that number grows steadily each year. We would be absolutely foolish to use that electricity to crack water, compress the H2, transport the H2, and convert it back to electricity in fuel cells, losing 65% of the energy in the process, than simply using it directly via batteries. Come on man! Discard the propaganda, separate your emotions from your positions, and think for yourself!
_hypx
And it's soon to be very cheap, just like the rest of green energy. You're basically stuck in the past and citing people who are also stuck in the past.
A fuel cell is also an electrochemical system. An FCEV is also an EV. Same electric motors and everything. They can attain the same level of efficiency as a li-ion battery and not any more complex. Less complex even, if you seriously analyze the complexity of the battery pack. And because of that, it can easily displace BEVs.
I don't know your background, but your writing is that of a bullshit artist. It completely ignores basic facts and substitute BEV propaganda.
somewhat_drunk
>They can attain the same level of efficiency as a li-ion battery and not any more complex.
No, they cannot attain the same level of efficiency. It's not even close, and no one who was arguing in good faith and had done even the most cursory research on the issue would make that absurd claim.
https://tide.theimi.org.uk/industry-latest/motorpro/efficien....
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/mirai-fcev-vs-model-3-bev-pau...
You're just making stuff up. We're done here.
_hypx
Wrong. Both are electrochemical systems. Both have a limit of 100% efficiency in theory. The fact that you don't know this suggests you're a giant bullshitter this whole time.
ephbit
What's your view on FCEV long haul trucks?
Do you see BEV becoming the dominant truck technology?
If FCEV trucks were to take off as a technology and get to a share of say 30 % of all trucks in some region, then I'd speculate that the FCEV tech in itself would ultimately displace BEV not only in the truck but also partially in the car sector.
somewhat_drunk
Long-haul trucking is the one possible on-road application for fuel cell tech. But with the rate at which battery tech is advancing, and the massive head start that existing recharging infrastructure (the grid already exists) has over hydrogen infrastructure (nothing exists), I would be surprised if, in 20 years, a significant percentage of long-haul trucks use fuel cells.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/eternally-five-years...
ephbit
One thing that makes me speculate that fuel cells will play an important role in the future is: the future electrical grids based on, say > 85 % renewables, will be a challenge to keep balanced 24/7.
In order to deliver enough electricity most of the time, without needing huge amounts of storage (which are tiny right now), renewables will have to be massively over built. I assume there'll be times when there's 5x or more the electricity available compared to actual consumption.
Let the sun shine and the wind blow in summer and there'll be huge amounts of electricity which cannot be stored or consumed by BEV or some other grid connected battery because they're not enough. Industrial processes won't easily consume sudden surges in available electricity either.
Take the UK grid with its average of ~ 31 GW. Let's say they triple their wind power capacity which is currently at ~ 18 GW and double their pv capacity which is currently at ~ 3 GW. That'd be 60 GW so roughly twice the electricity that's consumed on average.
We're in summer, heat pumps don't consume .. so 30 GW excess electricity over say 3 windy days adds up to ~ 2 TWh. That's the capacity of 26.7 million Tesla Model 3 (long range) with a 75 kWh battery each. And they'd all need to be charged from 0 to 100 %.
Batteries won't suffice, I think.
So what'll be done? Electrolysis, I think -> H2, ammonia, methane, ..
So there'll be significant amounts of these being produced and stored.
Ammonia might well become the energy carrier of the future, being shipped around the world with large tankers to transport energy from where it's produced to places where it's used.
If that were to become true, wouldn't the fuel cell be the fitting technology for heavy duty and/or long range vehicles?
And once there'd be infrastructure for trucks and heavy vehicles, roughly the same ifrastructure could be used for FCEV cars.
somewhat_drunk
Hydrogen will be produced when electricity exceeds supply, but it will be used to decarbonize existing H2 demand, which is massive.
As for smoothing out the electricity supply, EVs themselves are likely to play a large role, as will home batteries. The grid of the future will be much more distributed than what we have today. Tesla recently released a report which outlines where we are, where we need to be, and what is required to get there. It's succinct yet comprehensive, and well worth a read.
https://www.tesla.com/ns_videos/Tesla-Master-Plan-Part-3.pdf
_hypx
Fuel cells are battery tech. Again, where are you getting your info? It's pure bullshit and utterly detached from reality.
_hypx
This is also total bullshit. A fuel cell car is also an EV. Toyota is pursuing because it is the simply the better idea. People who repeat this bullshit are just brainwashed Tesla fans.
somewhat_drunk
If you have to resort to semantics in an argument to make your point, you've already lost.
_hypx
No, it's pointing out the obvious. Why are BEV fanatics so antagonistic to another EV? It is entirely about the competitive threat of them, not about any actual criticism. Which BTW is almost nonexistence because again, they're both EVs.
_hypx
This is total bullshit. Hydrogen is fundamentally necessary to a green economy. You literally couldn't reach zero emissions without it for industry and energy storage. Same is true of transportation in nearly every sector. People are only sorta excusing it for personal transport but only because rich people can make do with battery cars. But in reality, it's practically necessary for personal transportation too. Not everyone can recharge at home.
somewhat_drunk
Nothing I've said is bullshit, let alone the post in totality.
Feel free to point out a specific claim I've made that you believe is bullshit, and we'll proceed from there.
_hypx
Millions of tons of hydrogen is used in industry. Serious incidents are rare. Not to mention there hasn't been a single hydrogen car that has exploded or whatever (something that can't be said of BEVs). So just from that your argument is just lazy fearmongering and FUD.
somewhat_drunk
Industry is very good at mitigating risks with procedures and detection. Homeowners, not so much.
>Serious incidents are rare.
Even so, they're probably more common than you think. Google it.
>there hasn't been a single hydrogen car that has exploded
Uh... google "hydrogen car explosion."
>So just from that your argument is just lazy fearmongering and FUD.
So far, every point you've made has been weak or outright incorrect. Meanwhile, you have yet to seriously challenge any point I've made.
The reason for this isn't that I'm better at this than you. Your position is simply untenable.
I hope you figure out how to account for the bias that so obviously pervades your thought process. Cheers, I guess.
_hypx
There literally hasn't been a single hydrogen car that has exploded. You can only cite examples of people carrying hydrogen and due to incompetence it started a fire or explosion. Meanwhile, many people have died in fires in existing cars, including BEVs.
Sorry, but you are a liar. Your attitude is just a mask for your BS.
somewhat_drunk
Worldwide, about 50,000 FCEVs have been sold, vs about 7 million BEVs. Comparing the safety of the two on an absolute basis isn't just dumb, it's intentionally misleading.
Pretty sure at this point you're a paid propagandist.
If that's true: fuck you, die in a fire.
If not: I sincerely hope you learn how to think critically at some point. Have a nice day.
_hypx
And until 15 years ago, nearly zero BEVs have sold. Meanwhile, >1 billion ICE cars have been sold.
You literally are the dumbest person on this site I've met. Not are you incredibly stupid, you act like you have actual knowledge. You clearly are in the Dunning-Kruger zone, assuming you aren't intentionally trolling.
pjc50
The bait-and-switch is that while green hydrogen can be made, it very rarely is, and when it is, it's less cost-effective than a battery electric solution. It's almost always a Trojan horse for shifting carbon emissions away from the tailpipe to a refinery where you can't see them quite as obviously.
greggsy
I think it’s important to frame it within the sociotechnical frameworks that nations are able to operate under.
Introducing this technology will require incremental changes across industry, infrastructure and communities. Today, green hydrogen is out of reach for many economies. Building H2 ecosystems, will almost certainly require initial investment in brown/black hydrogen by burning fossils fuels, which is currently under development in Australia and Japan.
The transition to blue (renewable>LNG>H2) and eventually towards green (renewables>H2O>H2) hydrogen will be slow and will take decades to achieve. Purple (nuclear) hydrogen may be a next logical step for Japan.
It’s simply not possible to replace everything everywhere all at once. We should have gotten onto this two decades ago, so we unfortunately have to make compromises that seem cynical and small on the outset, but are still very difficult to implement and gain consensus.
_hypx
That is no different than a battery car. You are just shifting pollution to whatever is making your electricity. And if anyone comes in and says "I spent tens of thousands of dollars getting green electricity!" then it should be obvious that the same level of spending could make upstream hydrogen production vastly greener.
And no, it is not "less cost effective" because batteries involve dramatically higher upfront production costs. The argument is really just a troll argument and virtually identical to the same arguments used against battery cars.
pbhjpbhj
If battery material costs go high (it they're otherwise hard to come by) then it seems like hydrogen could find its niche?
pbhjpbhj
Strikes me that H2 made from excess solar panel output, at source, might become a thing. If you have enough solar for your needs then you're over-producing when the sun is at its peak. With feed in tariffs being low it makes sense to use this -- and hydrogen vehicles are an option.
nordsieck
> Strikes me that H2 made from excess solar panel output, at source, might become a thing.
Why is that better than putting it back into the grid and/or putting it into a battery?
pjc50
There's occasionally overproduction of renewables, which is normally just curtailed (discarded) because it exceeds grid demand.
The H2 for medium-term tank storage idea is not bad .. except for the very high capital cost of electrolysis. Without some means of making H2 that doesn't involve tying up a chunk of platinum as a capital asset this is a non starter economically.
Schroedingersat
Batteries are as yet inappropriate for long duration swings over weeks or months that cycle only a few times a year.
Better to compare it to thermal storage, PHES, simply curtailing it or even virtual storage via hydro or w2e (or hydrogen generation with no step where it is converted back to electricity or motion). All of which are more sensible than hydrogen for personal transport.
Rury
Capital cost of capacity mainly.
rowanG077
Isn't that a given since the invest in solid-state?
speedgoose
Solid-state isn't going to fix the crazy high consumption of their EVs.
datacruncher01
I think that Toyota won't really go heavy into EVs until batteries are more available. EV batteries are heavily dependent on lithium availability which is limited by world wide exploration limits. We are only able to mine enough to make about 2 million Tesla equivalent cars per year, and that's if none of it goes to phones other electronic devices. Toyota sells that many vehicles alone each year. Until there is something that can scale and still allow them to sell an economical model, they won't go heavy into EVs.
dev_daftly
I mean, Toyota has said this themselves. Their view is that making 1,000,000 hybrids is better than 1,000 evs because most of an evs battery capacity is wasted on a daily basis.
_trackno5
Please share that article if you can find it. Sounds like an interesting take!
I honestly don't get the criticism Toyota has been getting recently. I think their decision to not go all in on just electric vehicles makes sense, especially for countries where it is highly unlikely that full EV will be a reality in the next decade.
MontyCarloHall
>I honestly don't get the criticism [Toyota] has been getting recently. I think their decision to not go all in on just electric vehicles makes sense
Because for a while it seemed they were going all-in on hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, a technology that makes little technological (and even less practical) sense.
_trackno5
For a while, but not the case anymore. They seem keen on having a diverse set of offerings, with some EV and hybrid cars. Yet the criticism continues
thatwasunusual
> Please share that article if you can find it. Sounds like an interesting take!
I assume it's this one:
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Toyota-secures-h...
It seems to behind a soft paywall, so here's the archive.ph edition:
panick21_
Yeah so this is basically just repeating Toyota marketing. Yes they have lots of patents, because they studied lots of stuff, it does not mean they are in the lead of anything.
> while everyone is focused on lithium ion
Please remember that 'solid state' is just a marketing term. The actual meaning when talking in terms of automotive battery is 'lithium metal anodes'. So these are still lithium ion batteries.
And lots of people are working on lithium metal anodes, and have been for 50 years.
> Toyota was biding it’s time and getting ready to one-up everyone with solid state batteries and vehicles with double the range.
That is certainty what Toyota marketing has been telling people. But in reality scaling a new battery technology is incredibly difficult and if these claims were actually true we would see massive Toyota battery factory being build. When in reality its incredibly low volume production stuff that might show up in a few hybrids.
Also, 'solid state' isn't magically better then everything else. You can hit the same density with silicon. There are 100s of companies working on silicon and lithium metal anodes.
Toyota has announced some EVs but no actual product with these magical batteries that they have. The reality is, nobody, not Toyota best battery engineers know how difficult it will be to scale production of these things to a massive gigafactory. And if its not a massive gigafactory then its practically irrelevant in the EV market.
So unless we actually see a massive gigafactory somewhere that is dedicated to this type of battery, this is just marketing.
moogly
So are you saying this long game is why the anti-EV CEO Toyoda Akio is stepping down tomorrow? (Read between the lines: being ousted by the board).
panick21_
In realty his successor is just as anti-EV.
ezconnect
They have always been conservative. They have the most reliable hybrid in the market.
Aardwolf
Nice, when can we use them for phones and laptops lasting 72% longer and without fire risk?
Genuine question, because optimistic battery articles have been popping up for decades, but here we are still with lithium ion in practice.
jrockway
> here we are still with lithium ion in practice
Lithium ion batteries are actually amazing tech. I certainly remember the world without them; laptops had an hour of battery life, mobile phones were "car phones", everyone was running around paranoid about the "memory effect", and electric cars were an interesting curiosity always ten years away. Here we are today with pocket computers that last for days and electric cars buzzing around the city. In 30 years, some of this new tech we read about will be widely adopted, but in the meantime, it's not like things are that bad.
I think that electric airplanes will be the thing that new battery technology unlocks.
ezconnect
It's not all batteries, the electronics got less power hungry.
dougmwne
Drones are a good example of something that couldn’t exist with the old battery tech. Hobbyist RC aircraft always ran on small fuel engines. And the laws of physics around energy required to lift a craft are not changing anytime soon.
ezconnect
I agree Lithium batteries can't be beat on power density compared to other battery technology.
jeffalyanak
News about news battery chemistry is interesting, but it's not meaningfully correlated with our ability to produce practical batteries at scale.
If there are existing manufacturing processes that can be leveraged to build cells with this chemistry—and do so economically—then commercialization could happen very rapidly.
Otherwise, it's likely to be filled away until future manufacturing technology comes along, which may be "too late" if even better or more economical options exist at that point.
panick21_
Lithium ion is not one thing.
The 'Lithium ion' from 10 years ago is very different from it now. 'Lithium ion' is an umbrella term that contains lots of things. Just as 'solid state' is not really what anybody is talking about. What actually matters about 'solid state' is lithium metal anodes. There are also companies who are doing lithium metal anodes without being solid state.
If 'solid state' ever make it into the market, they will just be the new 'Lithium ion'.
hgomersall
I have a genuine question too. I've never been worried about phone battery life; I charge once a day and I almost never run out, nor do I consciously conserve battery. Is worrying about phone battery life a problem relevant to certain phones, or is it a problem with usage styles?
ibejoeb
It certainly depends on network quality. Do you stay mainly in one area, or do you move around all day? I use my phone for communication only--practically no browsing or app usage, no games--and in some places I can get away with a full day, others I need a recharge.
RivieraKid
I have a Pixel 4a and it doesn't last a whole day if I use the phone a lot.
So basically, if I wanted the freedom to have occasional heavy-usage days, I would have to buy a larger, heavier phone.
tomxor
If you read the article to the end it does actually offer reasonable perspective on this, pointing out that there are many other challenges left to solve before even getting to a prototype scale. TL;DR It's a promising step in the direction of solid state batteries.
Heston
"...the problem they face going through cycles of discharging and recharging in a stable way."
They suffer from poor wearing like almost all new battery technologies. Until that's solved they aren't useful.
lonk11
The article is about a solution to make lithium metal anode more stable. They discovered a coating that prevents the formation of dendrites, which are the cause of short cycle life of previous attempts at lithium metal anodes.
1970-01-01
>They explored coating its copper current collector with ultrathin lithium-activated tellurium. The aim was to control the way in which lithium metal spread across or “wetted” the copper. They found this new coating helped lithium metal deposit and dissolve from the copper current collector in a thin uniform layer.
Wikipedia: With an abundance in the Earth's crust comparable to that of platinum (about 1 µg/kg), tellurium is one of the rarest stable solid elements.
solarkraft
> Still, although this research may solve one critical problem with anode-free all-solid-state lithium batteries, a great deal of development is needed to actually bring them to market
Always.
I'm happy they found something that might perhaps some day become real, but it's going to stay irrelevant for years and may never happen. Unless you really care about minor scientific discoveries (rather than things that are directly going to influence industies related to energy storage), there's not much to see here.
No, we're not all going to have Aluminium-Air batteries in our cars next year. The hype around this stuff reminds me of the one around fusion reactors. Just around the corner. Sure, dude.
akokanka
Research Vs Reality are quite often decades behind in physical world.
jillesvangurp
Easy to forget that most car enthusiasts thought that Elon Musk was a lunatic that was obviously going to fail about a decade ago. And now he's basically dominating the car industry. Lithium batteries did not exist until the nineties and did not get practical for use in cars until about 15 years ago.
Research on solid state batteries has been ongoing since then. E.g. Quantumscape founded in 2010. and is planning to start small scale production next year. We'll see how successful they are of course. You are right that it takes quite long to take technology into production. But the counter argument is that there are a few decades behind us with stuff that is now slowly trickling into the market.
Double the energy sounds amazing. Until you ask the question "double of what". Double of what's available in the market right now (450 wh/kg, Amprius sells these in low volumes) would be 900 wh/kg. That's perhaps not what they mean. The article is infuriatingly hand wavy on what is being compared to what. Or maybe they do. Hard to tell.
solarkraft
You're not wrong, but these articles keep selling it like the market introduction is just around the corner. It never is. They never mention that the battery almost always a huge downside making it inviable for most applications. So I (and probably many others) have grown disillusioned of news around battery technology. Wake me up when pre-production units reach independent testers. I don't care enough about this stuff to follow the dozens of leads that appear what feels like every week but never go anywhere.
panick21_
Solid state (actually we talking about lithium metal anodes) have been researched literally since 70s.
RivieraKid
I think the best measure of real-world battery improvement would be a chart of iPhone / Macbook battery densities over time. My guess is that there's been little improvement over the last 10 years.
xbmcuser
This is according to CHATGPT so in terms of density you are probably correct though in terms of reliability speed of recharging there probably are improvements
iPhone 5: Dimensions: 51 x 39 x 3.6 mm (2.01 x 1.54 x 0.14 in) Capacity: 1440 mAh Voltage: 3.8 V
iPhone 5s: Dimensions: 51 x 39 x 3.8 mm (2.01 x 1.54 x 0.15 in) Capacity: 1560 mAh Voltage: 3.8 V
iPhone SE (1st generation): Dimensions: 51 x 39 x 3.95 mm (2.01 x 1.54 x 0.16 in) Capacity: 1624 mAh Voltage: 3.82 V
iPhone 6: Dimensions: 66.4 x 51.8 x 3.8 mm (2.61 x 2.04 x 0.15 in) Capacity: 1810 mAh Voltage: 3.82 V
iPhone 6s: Dimensions: 65.6 x 51.7 x 3.8 mm (2.58 x 2.04 x 0.15 in) Capacity: 1715 mAh Voltage: 3.82 V
iPhone 7: Dimensions: 73.1 x 32.4 x 5.2 mm (2.88 x 1.28 x 0.20 in) Capacity: 1960 mAh Voltage: 3.8 V
iPhone 8: Dimensions: 74.5 x 26.6 x 6.9 mm (2.94 x 1.05 x 0.27 in) Capacity: 1821 mAh Voltage: 3.82 V
iPhone SE (2nd generation): Dimensions: 67.3 x 40.9 x 3.73 mm (2.65 x 1.61 x 0.15 in) Capacity: 1821 mAh Voltage: 3.82 V
iPhone X: Dimensions: 88.9 x 32.5 x 3.25 mm (3.5 x 1.28 x 0.13 in) Capacity: 2716 mAh Voltage: 3.81 V
iPhone XS: Dimensions: 87.16 x 32.61 x 2.96 mm (3.43 x 1.28 x 0.12 in) Capacity: 2658 mAh Voltage: 3.81 V
iPhone XR: Dimensions: 76.0 x 30.8 x 3.25 mm (2.99 x 1.21 x 0.13 in) Capacity: 2942 mAh Voltage: 3.81 V
iPhone 11: Dimensions: 90.0 x 31.9 x 3.25 mm (3.54 x 1.26 x 0.13 in) Capacity: 3110 mAh Voltage: 3.83 V
iPhone 12: Dimensions: 81.5 x 32.4 x 4.1 mm (3.21 x 1.28 x 0.16 in) Capacity: 2815 mAh Voltage: 3.83 V
iPhone 13: Dimensions: 84.5 x 30.9 x 5.7 mm (3.33 x 1.22 x 0.22 in) Capacity: 3095 mAh Voltage: 3.83 V
slaw
from iPhone 13 to iPhone 5. volume increased 2.08 times and capacity increased 2.15 times.
aldonius
Maybe not in specs, but what about in specs per dollar? Surely there's been enough computer battery production over the last decade for Wright's Law to have an effect.
jagtongue
No fire risk? hmmm ... but still on lithium 25 years later. But then again the recent advancements in solid-state battery technology have led to twice the energy density of traditional lithium-ion batteries as stated in this read, as well as eliminate the need for a separate anode altogether. Think its because it uses a lithium metal foil both as the anode and the current collector. But i don't understand the science behind why that would result in a more compact design.
moron4hire
I didn't see any mention of sustained discharge rate. I mean, pretty much any battery will put out about as much current as you ask of it. But that comes with heat scaling problems and heat dramatically effects capacity. So at what kind of discharge rate are they seeing ”72% higher capacity by weight than Li-Ion," and how does it compare to typical Li-Ion usage?
nmeofthestate
* goes straight to the HN comments before reading TFA, to find out why this battery sucks *
AtlasBarfed
2x the density of.... what? ? "commercial lithium ion batteries"?
Watt-hours per kg, and watt-hours per liter.
And with all solid state, have they solved scaling production beyond a small demonstration cell? It is now a known investment "con" to create a solid state cell that appears to kick the tar out of conventional cells and then try to get funded to "solve production". I lost count of how many companies were doing this.
This is an embarrassing article from an engineering organization website.
What appears to be happening is that solid state will simply be a distraction technology. Sulfur chemistries (medium/long term) and prosaic unsexy LFP and sodium ion (short term) will drive the true revolution in electrification of transportation and grid storage.
Solid state may produce usable use cases around laptops / phones / etc at some point, and who knows, solid state sulfur may become a thing eventually, but what's really needed from batteries now is scale and cost.
The 200 wh/kg LFP (230+ on the roadmap/12-24 months away!) and 150 wh/kg sodium ion (180-200 wh/kg on roadmap) going into mass production are the big revolution in batteries. That is a non-cobalt/nickel LFP battery that can do 400 mile cars, and a sodium ion battery that should drop to 40$/kwh costs that can do a 300 mile car, and the roadmap should further upgrade/cheapen those chemistries.
The 150 wh/kg sodium ion battery should mean 250-350 mile range city cars that are significantly cheaper than ICE drivetrains can achieve. It is tranportation for 3-4 billion people that won't use fossil fuels.
LFP should eventually be able to do the medium range electric semi truck. Sulfur chemistries should enable or better a long haul semi, but sulfur chems are probably 8-12 years from mass production (I really hope I'm wrong and it is sooner though)
chimen
Surprised how "dead" this industry is. I remember having Lithium-Ion batteries since I was in high school which was more than 20 years ago (and some Li-Po until then). Everything is leaps and bounds since then but not the batteries. Seems like a massive disconnect to me but I'm no chemist or researcher in this field.
ben-schaaf
Energy density is ~8 times higher than in 2008 at 1/10th the price. That's more progress than we've made in single-core performance in the same timeframe.
Sources:
https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1234-apri...
https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/evolution-of-...
leoc
Did you mean 'more progress'?
ben-schaaf
Yes I did.
eutectic
Any idea why utiliy-scale is so much more expensive than automotive?
Schroedingersat
Fire control, temperature control, chemical safety systems, daily 2-3C (half hour to 20 minute) charge and discharge rates, industrial grid scale high voltage grid forming inverters. And finally, the auto-makers got to the front of the queue for raw materials before prices spiked (and the ones that do both just take the profit).
Expect more consistent prices in Q3 2023 once the end of the lithium bubble works its way through the system.
AtlasBarfed
That has to be an astroturfer that posted that comment.
empyrrhicist
Compare a power tool battery from any of the major brands from 20 years ago to the ones today. It's still lithium, but real performance is night and day.
windowsrookie
It's definitely not "dead". As commented above me, there have been massive improvements.
20 years ago laptops had two hours of battery life. Today a MacBook has 20+ hours of battery life. Obviously many components have become more efficient, but battery improvements have also contributed to that large increase in battery capacity.
ben-schaaf
The iBook G3 had a 45Wh battery which is only slightly less than a M2 air, and barely under half of the maximum you can take on a plane. Battery development has led to smaller, lighter and cheaper batteries in laptops but not really to an increase in capacity.
londons_explore
Many laptops now are 99.6 Watt hours.
The 100Wh battery limit means they have little incentive to further improve battery technology. Any increased storage capacity wouldn't be legal to fly with, so all it could do is make the laptop very slightly thinner or lighter.
Anarch157a
Because Apple realised that a thin and small laptop sells better than a chunky one. Make a Mac Book the sane size as the iBook G3 and you could have a week's worth of battery.
But then you wouldn't be allowed to carry it on a plane. The limitation is not tecnological, is regulatory.
jackmott42
Lots of fields have run into fundamental physical limits that pause progress. Rocketry is another. In the 1950s we pretty much figured out how to throw gas out the back as fast as possible, and so not much has happened since that improves rocket performance. We did finally figure out how to reuse a bit of the rocket affordably though so that has been nice.
similarly airplanes stopped getting faster because we hit the point where the atmosphere starts melting you to death, and not much can be done about that.
battery chemistry is hardly dead though, since 20 years ago there have been all kinds of improvements in different directions. Just no big leaps. But the little improvements add up.
reisse
> similarly airplanes stopped getting faster because we hit the point where the atmosphere starts melting you to death, and not much can be done about that.
While I agree with your point in general, have to nitpick here. Thermal protection is mostly solved problem by now (think Space Shuttles and other reentry vehicles). Commercial airplanes stopped getting faster because they hit a sweet spot between speed and fuel consumption. Military airplanes are stuck because hypersonic aerodynamics is very hard and different from subsonic/sonic/supersonic ones.
londons_explore
Rocketry progress stopped because world governments cut back funding dramatically in the 1960's, and private demand for rocket launches isn't much.
Aeroplanes stopped developing because the whole industry is now highly regulated. The barrier to getting a new type of plane/engine design to market is beyond what pretty much all startups are capable of. That's why we still fly some planes like cessna designed in the 1960's, back when regulation was more lax.
I don't think either rockets nor planes are anywhere near fundamental physical limits if we took away the 'human' limiting factors.
lm28469
2000 li ion batteries are the same as modern li ion batteries the same way a Volkswagen golf 4 is the same as a golf 8, aka they're not
amelius
How do you get the energy out when it has no anode?
Title seems a bit weird for an IEEE audience ...
ashish10
Isn't this what Quantumscape is already betting on ?
Phurist
Yeah, Isn't that what engineers in the Skunksworks at Mutual Polydynamics were already working on in scope of the SANS ICS HyperEncabulator?
AtlasBarfed
Hey, remember them? They were right on the verge of production allegedly while the shorters were "outing" them?
I've heard nothing about them for a solid 16 months, so I'm guessing the shorters were right.
Solid State batteries appear pretty easy to crank out a demonstration cell with lots of density advantages over the production cells, and handwave away the scaling of production as a detail resolved in investment. There are a solid dozen companies I've seen with that basic approach.
None of the solid state companies appear close to scaling production.
Likely the sulfur chemistries will beat them to market with far superior material cost and density and scalability. Solid state still has a good opportunity in cell phones / laptops / etc, which is a big market, but the real play in batteries is grid storange and tranportation, which will dwarf phones/laptops by several orders of magnitude in volume.
panick21_
The never even claimed to have their first medium scale production facility before 2024 and only then going into medium scale production. Their first real factory isn't planned until later this decade.
Not sure where people got the idea that they claimed they are on the verge of large scale production.
They were on a little bit more then lab scale production.
vrglvrglvrgl
[dead]
Lithium ion batteries set the standard because they have an acceptable level of all the key metrics: energy storage by weight; energy storage by volume; discharge rate; charging rate; production costs.
Every single one of these big breakthrough announcements touts how great this new tech is- in just one or two particular metrics.
The problem is that Li-Ion batteries are just barely acceptable in all of those metrics. No new battery is going to replace them unless they can match Li-Ion in every metric and beat them in at least one.