Samsung researchers build solid-state EV battery with 500-mile range
caranddriver.com
caranddriver.com
Far more interesting is this [1]
> china-is-building-one-battery-gigafactory-a-week
> There are 136 of these super-sized EV battery plants in operation or being planned: 101 in China and 8 in the USA.
[1] https://www.benchmarkminerals.com/membership/china-is-buildi...
Tesla of course is a premium brand with pricing power. But can Tesla sustain any sort of real battery manufacturing advantage over China?
We think a lot about developing better car batteries, but car batteries are fine -- if the world had to live with 300-mile ranges, it would probably not be the end of prosperity. What we need are grid batteries, which are the only realistic replacement for fossil fuel power plants -- sorry, nuclear alone, while a valuable part of a future grid, won't handle variable loads.
Grid batteries are a commodity. By contrast these increasingly efficient car batteries are basically a luxury product. Unfortunately capitalism won't normally allocate many resources towards something with low profit margins, but the Chinese government will. Whether or not Tesla can keep up with China at making toys, it is no remedy for the lack of action by our own governments to provide technologies Tesla can't make money off of.
Who said anything about price? This is an R&D milestone at best, not a consumer product as the article very clearly states both in the subtitle and in the body of the article.
> Far more interesting is this [1]
Great way to derail the conversation
How long is a piece of string? As long as you need it to be (as long as you keep adding more string)
Samsung Press Release: https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-presents-groundbreak...
Concrete claims:
50% better volumetric efficiency for their prototype. No mention of pack or module volume.
> "the ultrathin Ag-C nanocomposite layer allowed the team to reduce anode thickness and increase energy density up to 900Wh/L."
1000 charge cycles.
No information about: temperature range, cell voltage, material cost, manufacturing requirements, impact sensitivity, a million other things needed for a commercial product.
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I will believe in Solid State batteries when iPhones come with them.
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The limit for cars is almost always tires, as it is in this case. Or rather the interface between tires and the road. Weight always deforms the road surface, more weight deforms the road more, and at a certain point the road quickly breaks down.
Thus, governments put weight limits on vehicles [0]. In my state, it's 20,000 pounds for a single axle (it assumes you will be using a truck and loading the rear axle).
If we take that 20,000 pounds and subtract 2,000 for the cabin and the rest of the drivetrain, you could have 18,000 pounds of batteries. I think 18,000 pounds of batteries could take you a long long way.
As a cross reference, a Commercial Drivers License is only required at 26,000 pounds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_driver%27s_license
0: https://www.txdmv.gov/motor-carriers/oversize-overweight-per...
[1] https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/hybrid-electric/news/a...
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-020-0575-z
It appears that the key advance is to prevent dendrite growth on the anode by covering it with a layer of silver-carbon composite. No idea why silver was chosen, but it seems to be in small enough amounts not to drive up the cost of the battery. Manufacturing this battery at large scales will require scaling up the process of producing the anode, which could take a while.
It is still essentially a lithium-ion battery with the usual (cobalt-containing) cathode materials, but I see no reason the same anode technology couldn't be used with a cobalt-free cathode, should such cathodes ever catch on.
> The battery they built has a 500-mile range
Cool!
> ...and can be recharged more than 1000 times.
Wait, what? That seems like a very small number to quote. I mean, I assume when a company quotes a number like that, the real number isn't _much_ higher than the number they do quote. Let's say, 1200 or so. I'd really like some clarity on that number. If 'charging' in this context means going from say 80% -> 100%, That's less than 4 years if you charge it that much every every night, which may be very close to typical. What happens after 1000 charges? I assume at that point there is some loss of capacity as is typical, but it'd be helpful to know how much loss.
(1000 * 500 miles / charge) = 500,000 miles
The original article states it's a cycle life of 1000 charges, that means full charges, say charging from 90% to 100% doesn't count as a full charge. These batteries are tested with 0->100 charges, but other factors affect battery life, like temperature and charging rate. After the 1000 cycles the battery isn't dead, it will just hold partial charge, basically degrading partially over time each discharge. It's basically saying "After 1000 full charges, the battery will only retain 80% of the original battery capacity".
IIRC my pixel 3a has LiPo battery and is rated for 300 cycles and from what I can tell lithium ion usually has a cycle life of ~500.
edit: Adding link to original article https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-presents-groundbreak...
Usually the end-of-life for traction batteries is specified at 80% of original charge (80% state of health), after that they're recycled as industrial energy storage for grids etc.
But with articles such as these, claiming breakthroughs and whatnot, it's always good to be extra suspicious and verify that they're using the same assumptions.
Personally, I can't see driving that distance without a break (at a supercharger) somewhere in the middle, so the incremental range benefit is definitely not a game-changer.
A more important breakthrough would be in cost-per-watt-hour. If we saw much cheaper batteries with the same capacity, it would go a long way toward reducing our use of fossil fuels, both in vehicles and in electricity generation.
As others noted, it's also 50% smaller. The headline is kind of misleading the range is only part of the story.
The research looks interesting, so the question is whether they can develop an inexpensive mass manufacturing process. If they can, can they do so before other batteries upstage them? These batteries appear to be about 23% more energy dense (volumetrically) than Tesla Model 3 batteries, with some possible safety advantages as a bonus. However, by the time these batteries hit the market (2-3 years minimum, I would guess) Tesla will probably be at or above that energy density level. The safety advantages will probably make it competitive for at least some applications, though, and they may be able to increase the energy density even further, so we will have to wait and see.
Sure, it might be better in some dimensions, but it's almost certainly not the immediate revolution, because there is almost always some way in which these supposed miracle batteries fatally suck (life span, temperature sensitivity, energy efficiency, weight, self-discharge, volume, material cost, mass-producability).
My view is pretty in line with Elon Musk's here: In the mid term lithium-ion batteries will keep being the best compromise. I'll really believe that a new technology is not vaporware when I hear Elon talk about or Tesla invest in it (this has happened with Maxwell capacitors, for example).
The fact that it isn't a panacea for all energy ills shouldn't preclude us from discussing it as an incremental development, agreed?
...so if you put the same pound for pound battery size (Tesla Li-ion 400miles) you'd get 800-1000miles per charge?
i would say their scientists and bean counters know better than to throw money away.
So can we just keep the battery the same size and now it has 1000 mile range?
And - (knows nothing about EV battery technology) - these batteries are liquid cooled, no? Is there no solvent they can run through the battery to "clean off" the crystals that develop?
I guess designing the car around those lighter batteries can get you a total decrease in weight of around 20%.
If so, and assuming that’s a similar decline in energy used per kilometer, a 50% smaller and lighter battery already can give you 25% more range.
(disclaimer: back-of-the-envelope calculation by a non-expert)
>I will believe in Solid State batteries when iPhones come with them.
Wow this community is full of assholes who vote each other to the top as to avoid or derail conversation.
The title itself says it is about research, if you don't care until the technology is packaged into a product which is then packaged into an iPhone please just shut up, go elsewhere. Find an article about iPhone accessories to comment on.
Sorry about the coarse language but its much more civil than a lot of the supposedly enlightened takes I see here, and its only gotten more snotty in time.