
Samsung researchers build solid-state EV battery with 500-mile range - airstrike
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a31409442/samsung-solid-state-battery-revealed/
======
algo_trader
Yawn. Another battery breakthrough with x10 price...

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...](https://www.benchmarkminerals.com/membership/china-is-building-one-
battery-gigafactory-a-week-the-us-one-every-four-months-simon-moores/)

Tesla of course is a premium brand with pricing power. But can Tesla sustain
any sort of real battery manufacturing advantage over China?

~~~
scythe
>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.

~~~
NotSammyHagar
tesla is doing great making their own batteries with panasonic, that's a key
reason they got this far. their new batteries coming in the us will cement
their leadership. It's mass high quality batteries that keeps them ahead.

------
csours
500-Mile Range! Wow! /sarcasm

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...](https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-presents-
groundbreaking-all-solid-state-battery-technology-to-nature-energy)

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.

\---

I will believe in Solid State batteries when iPhones come with them.

~~~
imglorp
Power to weight ratio is also interesting for a vehicle, not just power per
volume. Some variant of the Rocket Equation must come into play because you
need stored power to carry around your stored power.

~~~
millerm
"Rocket Equation", thank you! I've had a total brain-block on that term as I
was literally just trying to answer a question related to this, on a Tesla
forum, and I couldn't remember the name! The inevitable question of "Why can't
they just add more battery for more range?" Like you mentioned it's some
variant of this and I'm sure there is a name for it. I'm not a mechanical
engineer. But again, dragging more mass requires more energy. In an
automobile, you'd need a bigger and stronger car. My Model 3 is one heavy
beast. More weight and it would need bigger (perhaps more) tires and a
heavier/stronger drivetrain. The new Roadster was must have been planned for
"some time in the future" production (not in production yet) because they have
some formula that dictated a new battery was coming. A 620 mile range on a car
that can do 0-60mph in 1.9 seconds (twice the range of my car) has to have
some way of reducing that weight. Who knows. Fascinating problems. I wish I
had gotten myself into that sort of engineering when I was young(er).

~~~
csours
The Rocket Equation is important for rockets because they cannot pause and
refuel like cars or even airplanes can. There's no compromise or trade-off in
the rocket equation. For cars or airplanes you can have a smaller tank and
more refuelling. Obviously for airplanes there is some minimal tank size where
you can't actually take off, and some maximal tank size where your airplane
doesn't have any usable cargo/passenger space.

\---

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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_driver%27s_license)

0: [https://www.txdmv.gov/motor-carriers/oversize-overweight-
per...](https://www.txdmv.gov/motor-carriers/oversize-overweight-
permits/texas-size-weight-limits)

------
scythe
This research was published March 9 in _Nature Energy_ :

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-020-0575-z](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.

------
hcknwscommenter
Link to paper here:
[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-020-0575-z](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-020-0575-z)

------
Octoth0rpe
From the article:

> 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.

~~~
jluxenberg
If that's 1000 full charge-discharge cycles, that'd be completely acceptable
(assuming that the usable capacity is still close to 100% at the end of the
lifespan) for a car which typically has a lifespan of 150,000 miles or so.

(1000 * 500 miles / charge) = 500,000 miles

~~~
Octoth0rpe
Agreed. It'd be nice if we could have some kind of confirmation.

------
tnash
...in a lab. I wish battery articles would include in the title whether they
are commercialized or just achieved in ideal conditions.

------
samcheng
The Tesla Model S currently has a 400-mile range, so this would represent an
incremental improvement.

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.

~~~
lttlrck
50% smaller is nothing to be sniffed at.

~~~
readhn
double the range 2x400miles - pound for battery pound.

------
thesis
Comparing in mileage seems terrible to me. Surely Elon could make a 5000 mile
range EV with a big enough "battery" right?

~~~
airstrike
The mileage is just for the headline. A better stat mentioned in the article
is that this one has a 50% smaller footprint than Lithium

------
sacred_numbers
This article is from March and is referencing this research paper:
[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-020-0575-z](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-020-0575-z)

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.

------
solarkraft
I don't get why people still fall for the miracle battery announcement. Maybe
it's because I am more interested in batteries than the average person, but
I've seen dozens of vaporware battery announcements and see very little reason
to believe that this is not one.

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).

~~~
airstrike
I don't think anyone's quite claiming the technology in the article to be
revolutionary. The subtitle literally says "but don't expect to see it anytime
soon"

The fact that it isn't a panacea for all energy ills shouldn't preclude us
from discussing it as an incremental development, agreed?

------
readhn
>> Plus, the battery pack created during the research was 50 percent smaller
than a conventional lithium-ion battery.

...so if you put the same pound for pound battery size (Tesla Li-ion 400miles)
you'd get 800-1000miles per charge?

------
pcurve
good lord, you all are tough customers. It also takes up 50% less space and
charges faster (though doesn't say how by much).

i would say their scientists and bean counters know better than to throw money
away.

------
rasz
They should put some in self bricking Bluray players
[https://hackaday.com/2020/06/26/ask-hackaday-what-can-be-
don...](https://hackaday.com/2020/06/26/ask-hackaday-what-can-be-done-with-
your-bootlooping-blu-ray) , or exploding smartphones.

------
lsiunsuex
"Plus, the battery pack created during the research was 50 percent smaller
than a conventional lithium-ion battery."

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?

~~~
Someone
The battery in a Tesla is about 25% of its weight. So, going to a battery
that’s 50% of the current battery’s weight (assumption #1: smaller =
equivalently lighter) would cut about 12% of the car’s weight in batteries
alone.

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)

------
thatlongthrow1
>Yawn. Another battery breakthrough with x10 price...

>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.

------
Covzire
July's issue of "Battery Tech Hopium" mag came a few days early. Nice, nice.

------
m0zg
Is it the same Samsung whose batteries were banned on flights just a couple of
years ago? I think I'm gonna wait and see on this one.

