Article seems to be a little confused about what "power density" means, as opposed to "energy density". From the article: "Such batteries provide a 20 to 30 percent improvement in power density — with a corresponding increase in how long a battery of a given size could power a phone, a computer, or a car." No - a 20 to 30 percent greater power density means that you can drain the battery 20 to 30 percent faster by drawing more power. It doesn't mean that there is 20 to 30 percent more energy to draw out.
A significant increase in the lifetime (number of discharge cycles is compelling though). Plus I'm sure if the technology is commercialised, those with vested interests will be keen to lobby that solid-state batteries are required in electric vehicles due to the claimed safety benefits.
Certainly legislation and regulation will be big market shapers. I personally think we should jump on every improvement, because it benefits society. But the cost is currently born by the factory owners, and they selfishly want to depreciate everything out before retooling.
I don't think it's as grim as you are making it out to be. Especially for companies like Tesla and apple, the use of the product is directly tied to the battery. I just think it is a difficult problem.
My niece is in this space (battery research/startups). They keep failing, even with 20% improvements in whatever, because nobody will retool. So yes, that's about how grim it is.
Reading the paper, they don't even have an actual material. This is a theoretical result about the kind of material that ought to work. Which is a step forwards, but not a breakthrough.
Reminds me of when my dad and his colleagues researched a radical new technique to create solar sells at minuscule costs. In the end the physics proved the hypothesis would never work, which was like putting a sign at the start of a road labeled "DEAD END." No sense getting our hopes up until the science backs up the theory.
Well, what we need to spark a revolution on many fronts is simple:
Half the volume
Twice the energy
We had something like that happen when going from NiCd to LiPo chemistry. On one of my high performance gliders I went from a massive, heavy 27 cell NiCd pack to a 6 cell LiPo pack that's easily half the volume and probably half the weight, if not less. And the LiPo pack can easily deliver 200 "anytime/anywhere" Amps. Yes, the thing goes up vertically like a rocket. Motor only runs for 10 seconds, if that.
I'm not a chemist but I think the only way to achieve this half/double evolutionary step is with chemistry, not structure (as in, making layers smaller). Lithium is nasty stuff. Part of me hopes we can bring something like carbon nanotube-based supercapacitors to this level of performance and radically change electrical energy storage without going to nasty chemistry. It would almost feel "zen" to use carbon for efficient energy storage.
Yes, there's a bit of sarcasm there in calling it "simple", because it isn't at all.
I suspect the only chemistries that will support that kind of improvement are air-breathing cells (vanadium boride-air has a specific energy that narrowly beats gasoline).
Unfortunately they can't be recharged in-situ, so they probably will be limited to applications where that kind of energy density is really necessary (e.g. airliners).
Colloquial usage is not always perfectly aligned with the dictionary definition of a word. I thought it was rather clear that the phrase "almost indefinitely" is colloquial, given the obvious absurdity if taken literally.
I'm not sure how you've interpreted the phrase "almost indefinite" as meaning "incredibly short lifespan" but it undoubtedly means they have a long but unknown lifespan.
The focus seems to be on handheld devices (phones, tablets, etc). But what if they went big to start, looking at traditional deep-cycle applications. Wet-cell batteries (like on golf carts) need regular topping-up with distilled water. AGM batteries remove that requirement and can be discharged deeper without damage, but still have liquid electrolyte in them. RV owners are now experimenting with LiFePo chemistry batteries, but the price is objectionable. I think there's a potential sweet-spot in there.
Yes, boat and RV owners would love deep discharge battery packs that have longer lives. Wet-cell is about a 48 month life, the AGM's a little better. A full set replacement for a large RV is about $2K, so getting another year or two is a big deal.
Note: Electrolytic capacitors dry out, frequently rendering power supplies and other electronics unusable in a decade or three but they're easily replaced w/ soldiering.
> Note: Electrolytic capacitors dry out, frequently rendering power supplies and other electronics unusable in a decade or three but they're easily replaced w/ soldiering.
When they don't take half of the circuitry with them when they go, of course. The capacitors in my last PSU failed so spectacularly that security personnel came to investigate, thinking there were gunshots.
Caps blow by thermal runaway when they get too old (far out of spec) or are run out of spec.
Was repair attempted it or was it just thrown away? Things can look cooked, but they're often easily repairable. Far too often, most consumers are completely clueless, choosing instead to fix it by going to the store and filling the landfill needlessly because they don't care about wasting resources.
Multiple companies seem to be researching solid-state batteries right now, including Google and Apple. Some startups have even promised commercialization within a couple of years (but we know how those promises usually go). My guess is we'll start seeing them within 5-10 years, just around the time EVs will go mainstream.
> Some startups have even promised commercialization within a couple of years (but we know how those promises usually go).
These are exceptionally difficult problems for a start-up to tackle (unless they've had a genuine 'eureka!' moment). It just requires too much up-front capital costs and intensive R&D. Even if you have the science right, scaling it up to production is a huge engineering challenge. Hope you're right about the 5-10 year estimate though.
That's true, there is low possibility that any particular line of research will pan out. Usually what happens is various groups each figure out bits of the puzzle and then everyone cross licenses the resulting solution.
I remember 10-15 years ago same rough groups were working very hard on cathodes for lithium batteries based on iron vs cobalt. Because cobalt is spensive and cobalt based cathodes suffer from thermal runaway. They tried all sorts of ways to make iron based cathodes that were conductive enough. Today lithium iron phosphate batteries are standard off the shelf consumer items.
Batteries are hard because material science is hard.
Srsly. It's one thing to build a prototype, another to bring costs down to profitability, uniform yield up and processes optimized.
WTTW: Such folks are better off calling McKinsey, they will send a 7'5" Brit ex-physicist whom speaks English and Mandarin and knows the secret handshakes of how .cn works.
For anyone interested in this topic, a company that seems fairly far along in developing a commercial solid electrolyte lithium battery is Sakti3. Of the higher-performance battery developers that I follow, they seem closest to commercial sales.
