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Solid-State Battery Startup Claims Breakthrough For Electric Vehicles (electrek.co)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: Now a startup developing all solid-state batteries (ASSB) secured backing from several high-profile investors, including several automakers, as it claims a breakthrough for the technology that will enable better electric cars. Solid Power is a Colorado-based startup that spun out of a battery research program at the University of Colorado Boulder. The company claims to have achieved a breakthrough by incorporating a high-capacity lithium metal anode in lithium batteries -- creating a solid-state cell with an energy capacity "2-3X higher" than conventional lithium-ion. They have already attracted investments from important companies, like A123 Systems and more recently BMW, which planned to validate their battery technology for the automotive market. Now they are announcing this week the addition Hyundai, Samsung and several others to the list as they close a $20 million series A round of financing. They are now working with two automakers and two battery cell suppliers for the auto industry. Some of the advantages that they claim their technology has over current batteries, as mentioned in their press release, include:
- 2-3x higher energy vs. current lithium-ion
- Substantially improved safety due to the elimination of the volatile, flammable, and corrosive liquid electrolyte as used in lithium-ion
- Low-cost battery-pack designs through: Minimization of safety features and elimination of pack cooling
- Greatly simplified cell, module, and pack designs through the elimination of the need for liquid containment
- High manufacturability due to compatibility with automated, industry-standard, roll-to-roll production
Solid Power plans to use the funds from its Series A investment to "scale-up production via a multi-MWh roll-to-roll facility, which will be fully constructed and installed by the end of 2018 and fully operational in 2019." The battery cells produced at this new facility "will be utilized for preliminary qualification of the company's solid-state cells for multiple markets including automotive, aerospace and defense."
- 2-3x higher energy vs. current lithium-ion
- Substantially improved safety due to the elimination of the volatile, flammable, and corrosive liquid electrolyte as used in lithium-ion
- Low-cost battery-pack designs through: Minimization of safety features and elimination of pack cooling
- Greatly simplified cell, module, and pack designs through the elimination of the need for liquid containment
- High manufacturability due to compatibility with automated, industry-standard, roll-to-roll production
Solid Power plans to use the funds from its Series A investment to "scale-up production via a multi-MWh roll-to-roll facility, which will be fully constructed and installed by the end of 2018 and fully operational in 2019." The battery cells produced at this new facility "will be utilized for preliminary qualification of the company's solid-state cells for multiple markets including automotive, aerospace and defense."
How much did taxpayers invest in the research at University of Colorado Boulder? How much can they expect in return? Will they be reimbursed by the IPO or do they have to wait until the profits roll in?
Research is typically paid for by you and I through our taxes. When a great discovery is made, all the profits go to private parties. When do we get reimbursed?
...omphaloskepsis often...
If it were all bullshit, we'd still be on lead-acid batteries. In the last 30 years, we've gone from lead-acid via NiCd and NiMH to Li-ion, with many improvements in each from the time they were first introduced until the time they were superseded. Battery capacity has increased by a factor of at least 10. Outside the bubble of the semiconductor industry and Moore's Law, that's massive progress.
Yes, not every breakthrough makes it into production. But there are plenty that do.
Also, we're not the Wall Street Times, this is a technology site. I want to know about interesting technological developments, and I don't want to limit my knowledge to just the ones that reach mainstream production.
And now imagine your Leaf magically had three times the range due to new battery technology. You would almost never need a fast charger. If your vehicle has a range of ~500 miles/800km and can be recharged overnight then unless you are engaged in cross continent tag team driving trips you are golden.
My '10x' estimate was low, it's closer to 20x for the last 30 years. Current Li-ions have twice the storage density of those early ones. And going from 100 to 200 Wh/kg is a much bigger deal than the previous doubling.
So the bung argument is still "woe is us, no battery improvement research ever reaches the market".
The first Mass-produced Li-ion batteries may have been produced in 1991, but it wasn't until around 2010 until they were used to make a viable mass-market automobile. It's only just now that we are starting to really build mass-market cars with EV range comparable to a tank of gas.
Even at the smaller scale, it's only been in the last 10 years or so that things like lithium-battery power tools have really come into their own. As recently as 5 years ago, most electric lawn tools were chintzy ni-cd powered devices suitable for only the lightest duty work. Now, you can get lithium-batteried tools that rival internal combustion counterparts and are suitable for even professional level work.
Long story short, there's been a LOT of battery development since 1991 even if the basic chemistry is mostly the same. Little 10-20% improvements compound into a revolution over time.
While it is unquestionably true that /. publishes <wild_exaggeration>an average of 2,000 "battery breakthrough" stories per hour</wild_exaggeration>, this one is different from the sludgepipe of ordinary hype in two important ways:
We never see that with any of the other battery-breakthrough hype pieces. They're all either announcements of tabletop-scale demonstrations (at best), or simply theoretical extrapolations of what some newly-discovered phenomenon could, eventually mean for increaing power density and/or rechargeability, making batteries out of less-expensive materials, incorporating unicorn scat, or other examples of wishful thinking in search of investors.
This one, by contrast, is an announcement unveiling a startup that has convinced some solidly-credible major corporate investors who have (at in Samsung's case) undoubtedly heard presentations on gee-whiz battery "breakthroughs" from a raft of wannabes and scam artists in the past - and have obviously passed on all of them. It's real enough that the bean-counters in these multi-billion-dollar enterprises have signed off on those investments. That's a completely different thing than the pure hype that virtually every other story on the subject consists of.
It's certainly still possible that their pilot plant will reveal scalar problems in manufacturing that eventually will relegate Solid Power's claimed breakthrough to "nice try, but no cigar" staus. It appears that we'll have to wait until 2019 to see if that happens (although, if the actual product doesn't live up to the investors' expectations, I kinda doubt we'll see a big, public announcement about it - more likely, it'll just quietly close its doors and disappear into the investor's writeoff disclosures in their annual reports to the SEC). But I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt - at least, until their Series A financing runs out ...
(Full disclosure: I have no affiliation with Solid Power. I have no financial interest in any tech or automotive company whatsoever, nor do I advise any such entity. Hell, my wife and I own a grand total of ONE share of stock - and it's a legacy of an employee profitsharing plan from her employment in the retail sector almost 20 years ago. And, fwiw, hype of any kind tends to make me break out in acute scepticism.)
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