Samsung to Mass-Produce Solid-State Batteries for 'Super Premium' EVs
pcmag.com
pcmag.com
This would be more convincing if reviewers could order samples.
Yoshino seemed to be shipping a solid state battery, but several people have bought and disassembled the thing, and it has liquid/gel components. That was disappointing.
CATL has some good comments.[1] Wu Kai of CATL was quoted as saying that the maturity level of the technology and the manufacturing process can currently be categorised at 4 on a scale of 1 to 9. CATL wants to be at 7 to 8 by 2027, which is equivalent to the production of solid-state batteries in small quantities. CATL also mentions that they have 1,000 people in R&D working on this. This is a big project in China. The China All-Solid-State Battery Collaborative Innovation Platform is getting government funding and has all the big battery makers in China on board.[2]
Toyota's roadmap shows solid state batteries around 2028.[3]
There are solid state battery announcements all over, but the big players all admit that the manufacturing is really tough.
A US startup exists.[4] They mostly make press releases, not products.
[1] https://www.electrive.com/2024/04/29/catl-expects-to-produce...
[2] https://www.electrive.com/2024/05/30/china-solid-state-batte...
[3] https://electrek.co/2024/01/11/toyota-solid-state-ev-battery...
[4] https://www.electrive.com/2024/08/06/ion-storage-systems-ann...
Once proven safer chemistries like LFP or sodium-ion are used more commonly in laptops (including SSBs like this Samsung one) then regulation should shift to accommodate.
That said, who really needs over 100Wh of battery when most long haul flights have plugs available?
If you don't have evidence that emissions will be within acceptable limits and will not interfere with the planes avionics then you don't introduce things into life safety critical areas like planes.
It's the same reason a captain can declare pretty much whatever they want on their plane and you as a passenger are _obligated_ to follow those orders. It's a felony if you don't. The captain doesn't have to present evidence just any concern that some action might interfere with the safety of his flight and that's the end of the discussion.
[1] https://www.quora.com/How-does-LTE-perform-on-high-speed-rai...
[2] https://www.huawei.com/en/media-center/multimedia/videos/202...
When I was getting my private pilot's license in '07, my instructor put his cell phone in the Cessna's glovebox (which is just below the radio) and told me to call him. There was definitely interference throughout me ringing him, but as soon as he took the phone out to cancel the call, the interference went away.
That's like configuring a firewall with a default-allow rule.
No, with any safety critical system you must assume there might be a problem until there is overwhelming evidence that there won't be.
I think OPs point is more that the FAA is extremely conservative with risk. Electronics weren’t allowed for a long time due the fear of interference with airplane equipment.
Ex https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/...
But also wet batteries in general, https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/...
Plenty of laptops still run intel lol.
You are talking about shifting regulations globally.
Companies like Apple are not going to build products just for one or two markets.
YouTube video editors and idiots running LLMs.
By the way, is your MacBook Pro HDMI port really loose and easily disconnected with any small movement or bump? It has been very frustrating.Some people are saying all the MacBook HDMI ports are like this.
That's right, the youth not caring About HDMI means they officially cannot think for themselves.
Also cut your hair!
Just think about it, the latest Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 is half an inch thick and they'll still complain they don't have the room for a headphone jack. Absolutely infuriating.
And 15” before had same resolution as 16”.
Ao going back to 15” would be a significant decline.
Granted, that attachment shouldn't exist, but that's a different problem whose root cause is "Apple expected the iPad to replace the Mac like the Mac replaced the Apple ][".
I would have thought, as shown by Chinese EV maker it may be better to have bulky larger cheap battery in an EV intended for long range driving, than an expensive long range EV because of solid sate.
On the other hand Solid State Battery on Smartphone could have been a major marketing point for many consumer.
which one of 'Hyundai, Stellantis, and General Motors' makes any supercars?
Do people have the equivalent to charge laptops with the respective speed of what they’ll need to match the 350?
100 kWh / 9 minutes = 667 kW
It could also be a planned obsolescence thing.
- time to recharge
- materials industrial scaling (eliminates/reduces nickel and/or cobalt and/or lithium)
- can be scaled up to a large battery (so many solid state batteries are these small demo cells, and an action car-worthy one that is 100x bigger never materializes
- cooling requirements/support equipment reduce overall pack density (LFP and I think sodium ion do not require cooling systems, which substantially closes the battery density at pack level with nickel/cobalt chemistries
Otherwise, these things are pretty near ideal. Higher cycle life and power density with pretty much the same materials as standard lipo cells.
A Tesla Model Y battery pack is 75 kWh and the highest rated connection within the typical American home with 200 amp 120/240 volt split-phase service is 50 amps over both phases: 12,000 watts.
75 kWh / 12 kW = 6.25 hours assuming the battery can be hit with maximum wattage continuously throughout its charge cycle (this is unhealthy).
To charge the Tesla Model Y 75 kWh battery pack in nine minutes the 240 volt cable would need to carry 2083 amps. This is hilariously far beyond the capacity of a 50-amp rated wire.
6 AWG copper wire which is rated for 50 amps has an 0.000395 ohms per meter (at 20°C). Assuming a ten meter length of wire, the resistance is 0.00395 ohms. Power dissipation in the wire P = I^2 * R. 2083^2 * 0.00395 ohms = 17,166 watts.
Temperature rise in the wire delta T = P / (A * k) where P = 17,666 watts, A = pi * 0.00411m * 10m. Assuming PVC insulation whose thermal conductivity is k = 0.19 W/m·K. Delta T is approx 700,615 degrees K. The surface temperature of the Sun is approximately 5773 K, so our wire would get about 121 times hotter than the surface of the sun if it did not instantly explode.
High level, EVs have almost killed combustion vehicles, we’re almost there [1] [2]. Batteries will only improve over time as EV production scales up.
But, it doesn't mean it's worthless to those that charge at home. I only own EVs. Even if I do 99.99999% of my charging at home, I still need to be able to charge during road trips. The faster the better. My partner and I have been eyeing the ev6 with it's 18 minute charge time. That's way easier to swallow than the 48 minutes the truck takes.
9 minutes and every seven hours of driving would be a god send, instead of our current 48 minutes every 4 hours
Batteries to push a car a reasonable distance aren't light and need to be protected during a crash. Hard to balance that with "and easily removable and swapped"
Are you sure it's unhealthy if you're already charging this slow? I'd expect 12 kW to still be below the slow part of a fast charge.
All you are doing is to sow confusion about home charging and public DC charging.
I need to make a 310 mile 1-way trip fairly regularly through _very_ rural parts of Texas. That trip is specifically why I don't own an EV.
At 600 miles, it makes it to where the humans in the car are now the likely limiting factor on how far you can go between stops.
This sort of battery makes that sort of trip easy.
There are already 3m liquid-cooled charging cables that allow 600kW+ DC charging. Many use more than one conductor per polarity to increase the capacity.
12kW is nowhere near the max charging speed. Here is the charging curve with a peak at 250kWh when DC charging: https://evkx.net/models/tesla/model_y/model_y_long_range/cha...
To achieve 250 kW of power, the Supercharger must supply much higher voltage and current than what is available from standard 120/240V circuits. For instance, Tesla Superchargers typically operate at voltages around 400-500V DC and deliver currents of up to 500 amps or more.
Unlike residential power, which typically uses single-phase electricity, Superchargers often use three-phase power. Three-phase power allows for more efficient transmission of large amounts of electricity and is commonly used in industrial settings.
The voltage supplied to a Tesla Supercharger is typically in the range of 480 volts AC (alternating current) for three-phase power. Inside the Supercharger, this 480V AC is converted to a higher DC (direct current) voltage, typically in the range of 400-500 volts DC, which is suitable for charging the vehicle's battery.
The cables used in Tesla Superchargers are specially designed to handle very high currents. For instance, to deliver 250 kW at a voltage of around 400V DC, the current would need to be around 625 amps. To manage the heat generated by such high currents, Tesla employs liquid-cooled charging cables. These cables have an internal liquid coolant system that actively removes heat from the cable as electricity flows through it.
I’m not sure why you are focusing on AC vs DC charging when your original assertion was related to the maximum wattage the battery can handle, which as I said is much bigger than 12kW.
Also, even the 12kW would be the wrong maximum for home charging. The Model Y has an 11kW onboard charger for converting AC to DC, so if you have a 3-phase supply at home then this is the maximum your car can convert (NOT that the battery can handle as you suggest). If you have single phase then it’s 7kW.
https://www.tesla.com/en_gb/support/charging/onboard-charger
Most people (myself included) who charge at home with any regularity will buy a wall-box, those are often 3-phase (mine is). Might be different in US of course, but almost every building here (Germany) receives 3 phases.
80 kWh / 0.8 = 100 kWh
To charge in nine minutes:
100 kWh * 60 min/hr / 9 min = 667 kW
A 400 V DC setup is common for this sort of application, so:
667 kW / 400 V = 1667 A
How physically large do the cables and related apparatus need to be in order to deliver this sort of current? What sort of training and personal protective equipment will people need in order to plug and unplug these cables? (Hint: Arc flashes are no joke!) What sort of service would you need to order from the electric company to be able to power just one of these installations?
Furthermore charging cables are locked while charging. (The latch is on the cable for CCS, and the latch is inside the car for NACS.) Unless the lock mechanism is mechanically broken, it's impossible to unplug a cable that's charging.
P.S. NACS is just CCS with a different connector.
Heat dissipation is a factor of amperage (solely) in the wire, and higher voltage means lower amperage for a given amount of power. Literally.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohm%27s_law]
The challenge here is that above a certain voltage, insulation gets prohibitively difficult (and bulky), which makes solid state electronics to control and manage it also prohibitively difficult. And leakage current becomes dangerous.
For example, we could run chargers at 1 million+ volts, and use standard 12 awg stranded cables to do it with very low losses (and low heat) at megawatt charging rates.
But the insulation would be crazy thick (inches?) and if there was any damage or minor leakage, it would be very dramatic very quickly. Like ‘mini nuke’ type arc flashes. And because the distance you can strike an arc in air with 1 million+ volts is measured in multiple feet.
But agree with the rest. Regardless of voltage and current, you still need half-megawatt delivery somehow.
> The voltage range was increased to 1000 V and it supports up to 615 A (charging cable) / 1000 A (charging pole) for power delivery.[14][15] However, they are currently software limited to 250 kW.[12][16]
v4 charger already features thermally conductive liquid to dissipate heat. Maybe one could get rid of cables and car could park near charger and some serious metal rods could automatically connect somewhere under the car.
Anyways, that 1000Vx615A already supports 615kW so very close as far as we consider cables/connectors.
Anyway, if you’re just interested in big connectors/cables MCS targets up to 3.75 multi megawatts for commercial vehicles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megawatt_Charging_System
Though 3.7MW is mostly theoretical there’s already 700kw chargers in the wild. The cables end up thick, but they can be supported by an overhead gantry which helps.
Why stop there? Heat management is the key limitation.
Whenever I see text like this, my opinion of the editors, and thus the entire publication, immediately plummets. Did they think that 1000 KM was an accurate figure to be converted literally to three significant digits? Do they even understand the field that they are covering? Was it a machine conversion? What else should I not trust in their publication?
From the article: "We supplied samples to customers from the end of last year to the beginning of this year and are receiving positive feedback,"
Even if they rounded it to 600 mi, that's still huge. It's less about the precision, since batteries are inherently imprecise, and more about whether this can live up to the marketing...
They don't really seem that much more expensive than comparable gas cars, either.
Dr Fauci talks about this point at the 1:50 mark
They are doing a programmatic conversion of 1000km to miles, because most Americans don't have a clue about the metric system. What's the problem?
>What else should I not trust in their publication?
I'd love to hear about what you think is "untrustworthy" about converting from kilometres to miles so the audience can visualize the distance. 1000 km = 621 miles, this is a fact.
1000km is not an exact figure. It’s rounded, probably up. Somewhere between 900km and 1100km. Likely closer to 999km than 1099 because they’d want to publish the biggest number they can reasonably claim. So you can assume the real range is between 900km and 999km.
The correct translation to miles would be “600mi”. Because 621 invents precision that wasn’t there in the original figure.
The correct thing to do would be to write the conversion as "1000 km (~621 miles)", so that the original value is not lost.
The former invites you to imagine that the actual Mileage will vary depending on other factors in the car design. The latter suggests some inherent theoretical limit caused by this technology that makes 621 miles into an absolute best case range.
Which of these two do you think the original author of the claim was trying to communicate?
Continuing the thread with rude pedantry is not adding anything useful to the conversation.
Even my Nissan Leaf which has notoriously slow AC charging (being single phase), the max 6,7 kW charging is very rarely a concern for me.
Me + partner rented a small e-fiat in Mallorca and it was really fun to drive, but there was a lot of anxiety around finding charging stations and wandering around for hours while charging. Note we didn’t have overnight charging at the hotel though.
For gas stations the throughput matters, because cars are blocking the queue. BEV charging is more comparable to parking. This is simply solved by having more charging stations (dispensers) at parking spots.
BTW: even in shittiest EVs, DC charging doesn't take hours. You probably have been misdirected to an AC charger designed to be used overnight. Unfortunately, many satnavs still treat charging stations as all equal like gas stations, and send you to the nearest one, instead of the fastest one.
It’s possible, I don’t recall. But those were the only available spots, in a European country with large ambitions to transition. Half were out of service, and many were occupied, which we often found out after driving to them for 15 min. With scarce spots, charging has to be fast to clear out space.
Getting to the point of convenience is a very solvable problem, but it’s still not there in many places and situations. I think fast charging will remain as an important part of that solution.
Kind of the reason why there is 10 gas pumps and not 100.
Charging locations are often combined with other businesses, which means it's usually not taking new space, only converts the parking space that would have been used to park a car anyway.
Large DC fast charging installations usually have a central hub that does the expensive things (AC-DC, batteries), and then the power is distributed to simpler dispensers that do communication with the car and cooling on the car's end. The whole setup is expensive, but the number of dispensers isn't the main limiting factor. The costly limiting factor usually is the maximum power the system can deliver at once. That directly dictates the maximum throughput (number of cars they can serve over time), regardless whether that power is delivered via few fast chargers or many slower chargers. The number of dispensers cancels out in the equation.
Incentivizing workplaces, grocery stores, malls, and apartment complexes to install slow chargers would make a huge impact on feasibility.
All for a lot less money than it takes to install L3 chargers.
But that's not necessary. You just need to recover enough charge to cover daily driving. In 30 minutes that can equate to adding 20 miles of range.
With EVs you are rarely trying to charge from 0 to 100. A slow charge is sufficient and preferable for battery health.
But a LOT of US apartments have mass parking or even a parking garage. These should be PERFECT for cheap efficient rollout of a charging infrastructure.
I've been pretty disappointed that cities or the federal government have not been proactive in providing incentives to apartment buildings to put in charging, even just normal 110v or 220v plugs.
Urban centers have not completely won the car pollution war, incentivising EV ownership in cities should be a paramount concern in infrastructure planning.
Street parking should be able to provide 110v charging as well. I mean, there are street lamps, right?
Then you will _never_ electrify the entire fleet of vehicles and you will always have ICE vehicles to fill the space that you feel is "overrated."
> charging is very rarely a concern for me.
Ostensibly because you live somewhere where large ICE vehicles bring the goods within range of your EV for you. This is great it's adequate for you. This is not sustainable.
I always get mistaken on these issues, as I think EVs are important, but the way we've deployed and built them is precisely backwards. We hoisted EVs on you because you would pay for them but it's made a complete mess of the transition.
1000km in the slow-charging Leaf takes 14 hours. 1000km in quick-charging cars takes 9h-9.5h, compared to 8.5h in a gas car[1].
For the trivial case of a city-only car with a home charger all battery metrics are irrelevant, so even the terribly outdated Leaf is adequate.
But when leaving the perimeter of the home charger, the car will need to be recharged. Charging speed is primary factor that makes long road trips in BEVs take longer than in gas cars. Battery sized large enough for a longest road trip adds a lot of weight and cost, which is a waste in daily city driving. Quick to recharging makes long trips possible, without need for a huge battery.
[1]: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1V6ucyFGKWuSQzvI8lMzv...
There are so many variables here. 1,000 cumulative km for my normal usage requires no waiting since I charge at home, so the it’s the ICE car that eats up time since I have to visit a fuel station.
On a 1,000km road trip I would be stopping anyway, so as long as it charges within the 30 min window it would not be additional time here either.
Overall, 75% of Americans surveyed said they intend to take some kind of road trip.
https://thevacationer.com/summer-travel-survey-2024/
This is on top of what other people have brought up about people who live in apartments, rent, or have no garage space.
Remember that in the US the 300-500 mile problem is huge. There’s no viable train alternative for medium to short distances for almost every city pair. If you have family in Tennessee and you live in Illinois you need to drive 6 hours unless you want to blow money on plane tickets and still end up eating up 4-6 hours at the airport and on the plane anyway.
The same can honestly be said for shorter trips like 100-200 miles. There’s no usable public transit between cities like Dallas and Houston.
“Most of the time” doesn’t really work when you need your car to do the thing you’re doing 5% of the time. I don’t buy a two door car because most of the time I don’t have four passengers inside, I buy a four door car because it’s extremely useful to have that capability without needing to reserve a rental car or borrow cars from friends.
This is especially important considering that gasoline vehicles are already for sale and compete with electric vehicles. Why am I renting a car or swapping cars when the whole point of owning a car was to have a car?
Now, Norway may be an extreme case, but driving for 1000 km daily in Europe while rare is still a normal event. For example, from Paris to Mediterranean coast it is like 800 km. And if one drives 130km/h that 1000 km of battery will be reduced to 500km so one will need to charge once and it will be nice if that can be done within 15 minutes not to add too much time to the trip.
And cherry picking distinct worst aspect of long distance driving in Norway and France and mashing them together them as one argument is disingenuous. There's plenty of stuff to stop and enjoy between Paris and Med.
Besides, no one appears to realize gas supply will vanish first in case of crisis, it did once happen already in Europe. Electricity usually gets cut later, if at all.
And hence, this battery range and ability to quickly charge will be very important to people.
You may disagree with their position (I do) but that won’t affect their buying decision - range and charging speed will.
It won’t happen in the first round, which is for luxury vehicles, though.
But here in KY the other week it rained for a whole week, the grass was really tall and thick, and the mower couldn't handle it at all. My neighbor's old, cheap gas mower worked just fine.
Could we get a price comparison per driven distance? Without it these numbers look good but I would be interested in the price too
Battery breakthroughs have been happening bi-weekly for decades
and our batteries now compared to then (ten years ago, twenty years ago, thirty years ago) are amazing.
It's one of the few technologies where we actually have seen leaps and bounds of improvements and overall quick dissemination of technologies to the public.
If you look at a chart if battery capacity density, it's been pretty much exponentially growing.
Another chart is here: https://physicsworld.com/a/lithium-ion-batteries-break-energ..., still does not seem exponential, looks kind of of linear to me.
Second one shows a linear progression too it seems, I agree.
But 10%/y is still a doubling within 8 years, so maybe not so bad – if my memory is correct.
[edit] see other comment, it is indeed very much linear, not exponential at all.
Also, LiFePO4 are already nonflammable lithium batteries. They have lower power density when solid state are supposed to be equal or better to LiPo.
> We show that short-circuited all-solid-state batteries can reach temperatures significantly higher than conventional Li-ion, which could lead to fire through flammable packaging and/or nearby materials. Our work highlights the need for quantitative safety analyses of solid-state batteries.
Would be interesting to hear how Samsung claim to have solved dendrite formation in their solid state batteries.
> dendrite
We're still doing this? Capacity by weight and volume, and efficiency per distance are much more meaningful. Charging is mostly a function of input voltage.
I don't care about the volume of my battery one bit, I care about how the car looks (and performs).
This pair of numbers is relevant, because it suggests that you can do an extended road trip with the car, start early in the morning, take a brief break that you'll need anyways at a sufficiently fast fast charger, or a longer lunch break at a place that offers "normal" fast charging, and be good to drive for the rest of the day. Or if you drive conservatively, possibly make an "all day" long trip (7-8 hours of driving) without needing to charge on the way at all.
Also, 9 minutes puts it into the "stop for refueling" rather than "extended break" territory, eliminating one of the major issues people worry about when considering whether to get an EV or not.
Efficiency is a function of the car design and drivetrain, how would that apply to the battery itself?
For example, a full charge in 9m from 0? That's 10x faster at least, than 100% charge with current tech. Adding 3x the range would be an additional leap.
Likely, someone was asked "how fast does it charge to 80%, like current batteries which take 15 tp 20 minutes?"... "9m!", and later "how much more range wouldnot have" and someone said a simple "double per weight".
Still, these solid states may not need battery heaters in the cold. That's huge on its own.
That said, I did replace the tires at 70,000. And I've filled the washer fluid dozens of times. So it's not completely maintenance-free ))
On the contrary, I would think individual leasers would be more likely to make the impulse choice of “greater range, and ‘only’ costs $X a month more” than companies, who often lease dozens or more cars.
Of course, battery degradation would likely have some influence on the lease price, but I doubt it will be a major factor.
I disagree. Battery longevity hugely affects how much money the lease company can get when they sell the car after X years, so in a world of perfect information, it should have a large influence on lease price.
In the real world, the lease company will have to gamble a bit. Many will choose to spread the risk by buying a spread of different cars, but they’ll still calculate expected sale price and adjust the lease price accordingly.
> very low risk of fire
Which is it?
Some things burn more easily than others.
49 CFR 571.111 S14. specifies a test that the image must pass, and that would not pass:
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-49/part-571/section-571.1....)
You can literally hang a cloth over the screen covering it and still do pretty much everything, most of the time, if the screen bothers you. The car has a few physical hardware buttons that do what you need.
The one they claim should enable a 200-300 mile city car that is fundamentally cheaper than an ICE vehicle. The materials costs are something like half of an LFP battery, and LFP batteries should be cheaper than ICEs too at scale, especially with the new generation of 200-225 wh/kg LFP batteries.
The reason why they aren't available is that government, especially the US, are still being unbelievably short sighted about proactive investment in EV switchover. There should be hundreds of billions of dollars being invested to switch over to PHEVs and EVs in all consumer and a great deal of commercial transportation every year.
Heck, we should have had PHEVs for all new vehicles mandated 10 years after the Prius was released in 1997, it's just that there was an oilman in the oval office. But Obama wasn't very proactive either.
EVs are better than ICE cars (mostly - I'm not sold on battery trucks and EV utility vehicles), but kerosene lamps are better than whale-oil lamps and yet both should be replaced by light bulbs as broadly and quickly as possible.
Sodium batteries are cool as heck, I'd love to see them in UPSes.
But e-bikes that I agree with you. Our car centric infrastructure basically makes an e-bike. Still pretty dangerous. With minimal infrastructure investment, certainly a thousandth of what would be necessary for a rail line, I said he could make a kick- ass ebike infrastructure completely separated from dangerous cars.
Old rail lines are actually really good for this. They're already separated from car infrastructure. But even if you dug tunnels or elevated, a bike path still would be a lot cheaper
Sadly, both are no longer in production (though the Leaf is still on sale from the final production run).
> German engineer Andreas Flocken built the first real electric car in 1888. Electric trains were also used to transport coal out of mines, as their motors did not use up precious oxygen. Before the pre-eminence of internal combustion engines, electric automobiles also held many speed and distance records.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicl...
Sure, Li-Ion batteries are generally pretty simple, and electric motors as an idea are simple. Making them work, at scale, and compete (or beat) ICE motors, while also managing to bring price down? Yeah, that takes decades of research.
We've know about rubber for a really long time. It still took us many decades to make a good tire.
How about $95/month? Nissan Leaf.
"Samsung to Mass-Produce Solid-State Batteries for 'Super Premium' EVs by 2027"
Actually, I don't either ...