Solid-state batteries show promise
""Certainly, the game has changed now," Joe LoGrasso, a director at the United States Advanced Battery Consortium, told Shift. "The Koreans and Japanese have a lot of development that looks promising. It's now a global race to get to the best solution."
Solid-state batteries appear to have the best potential to meet most of the objectives for a next-generation battery, experts say. More lab work tweaking the chemistry and more real-world testing will determine whether they really do have the right stuff.
In an interview with Bloomberg published last month, M. Stanley Whittingham, one of the three men awarded this year's Nobel Prize in chemistry for their work on lithium ion, acknowledged the potential of solid-state batteries but said he expects lithium ion to remain dominant for at least the next decade.
"Toyota Motor Corp. and a whole host of American companies are working on solid-state batteries, though it's not clear how much those will cost to manufacture, and it's not clear yet whether you'll get a decent amount of power. They may work for things like iPhones initially, but there are some big questions before they are used in larger-scale systems," he said.
General Motors is one of the U.S. companies working on solid state. During a Shift conference on batteries last month at Lawrence Technological University in suburban Detroit, Tim Grewe, director of GM's global electrification and battery systems, said GM is bullish on solid-state batteries."
"But GM, Toyota, Honda Motor Co., other automakers and battery suppliers are also working on improving lithium ion batteries. And while solid-state batteries have great potential, Whittingham says there is still plenty of efficiency left to be gained by improving the chemistry of lithium ion batteries. "Right now, we only get 25 percent of theoretical capacity of them, so that's 75 percent that's dead volume or dead weight," Whittingham told Bloomberg. "It's the top folks in the world working on that project."
LoGrasso said: "As we look at the next generation of lithium ion batteries, they are going to include more nickel content in the positive electrode. We'll start adding more silicon to deal with fast-charging in the negative electrode. There is a lot of research going on into less flammable electrolytes to try to deal with the flammability threat."
""Certainly, the game has changed now," Joe LoGrasso, a director at the United States Advanced Battery Consortium, told Shift. "The Koreans and Japanese have a lot of development that looks promising. It's now a global race to get to the best solution."
Solid-state batteries appear to have the best potential to meet most of the objectives for a next-generation battery, experts say. More lab work tweaking the chemistry and more real-world testing will determine whether they really do have the right stuff.
In an interview with Bloomberg published last month, M. Stanley Whittingham, one of the three men awarded this year's Nobel Prize in chemistry for their work on lithium ion, acknowledged the potential of solid-state batteries but said he expects lithium ion to remain dominant for at least the next decade.
"Toyota Motor Corp. and a whole host of American companies are working on solid-state batteries, though it's not clear how much those will cost to manufacture, and it's not clear yet whether you'll get a decent amount of power. They may work for things like iPhones initially, but there are some big questions before they are used in larger-scale systems," he said.
General Motors is one of the U.S. companies working on solid state. During a Shift conference on batteries last month at Lawrence Technological University in suburban Detroit, Tim Grewe, director of GM's global electrification and battery systems, said GM is bullish on solid-state batteries."
"But GM, Toyota, Honda Motor Co., other automakers and battery suppliers are also working on improving lithium ion batteries. And while solid-state batteries have great potential, Whittingham says there is still plenty of efficiency left to be gained by improving the chemistry of lithium ion batteries. "Right now, we only get 25 percent of theoretical capacity of them, so that's 75 percent that's dead volume or dead weight," Whittingham told Bloomberg. "It's the top folks in the world working on that project."
LoGrasso said: "As we look at the next generation of lithium ion batteries, they are going to include more nickel content in the positive electrode. We'll start adding more silicon to deal with fast-charging in the negative electrode. There is a lot of research going on into less flammable electrolytes to try to deal with the flammability threat."
