As automakers bet their futures on electric vehicles, they’re beginning to confront the hard realities of economics and physics. Prices for nickel and cobalt, two key elements used in EV batteries today, have skyrocketed, far outpacing inflation. At the same time, existing lithium-ion battery technology is improving, just not fast enough.
That’s sent companies searching for alternatives, from solid-state batteries to exotic materials and components. Many of those are years away from commercial use, though.
Mujeeb Ijaz, founder and CEO of Our Next Energy, thinks we already have many of the pieces we need. Ijaz wants to take two battery types — one optimized for daily commutes and the other for long road trips — and stuff them into the same pack. The idea is to let each type play to its strengths while the other covers for its weaknesses.
ONE grabbed headlines earlier this year after driving a Tesla 752 miles on a single charge but not much was known about its technology. But now, TechCrunch has reviewed ONE’s patent applications and has an exclusive look at how, exactly, the company plans to merge different battery types into an uber-pack that’s twice as energy dense as what’s in today’s EVs while still being able to handle everything from daily commutes to bladder-busting multistate journeys.
If ONE can deliver, its technology could help free consumers from range anxiety while also making EVs cheaper and safer, potentially unlocking a wave of purchases.
The right chemistries
Typically, EV batteries use one type of battery chemistry, and that chemistry has to be optimized to balance competing demands, including how much energy they can store, how safe they’ll be in crashes and how long they’ll last before they break down. Oh, and they shouldn’t be too expensive. It’s no easy task, and in the end, the battery ends up compromising on at least one of those goals.
Ijaz realized that while it’s unreasonable to try to fulfill all of those objectives with cells of a single type, it’s possible across a group of cells. All Ijaz had to do was figure out a way to make them work together.
That’s where ONE’s patent filings come in. They detail a technology that uses sophisticated battery management silicon and software to actively monitor the charge and health of more than one type of battery within a single pack.
The first type is lithium-iron-phosphate, or LFP. (The F comes from the chemical symbol “Fe,” which is derived from ferrum, Latin for iron.) LFP is cheap and safe, able to be charged and discharged deeply and repeatedly without forming harmful dendrites that can cause short circuits within a cell that can lead to fires. ONE uses LFP cells for what it calls the traction battery — the part of the pack that drives the wheels. And because LFP can be charged and discharged frequently without losing much capacity, it’s an ideal chemistry for daily driving.
But for all their strengths, LFP cells aren’t cut out for long-distance driving. They’re heavy for how much energy they store, and when you want to go far, the extra mass is a drag. Which is why Ijaz envisions pairing LFP with other cells that have higher energy density.
Why not just use higher energy density cells for the whole battery? Some of those chemistries begin to break down after just a few hundred charge cycles. If those were to be used and charged on a daily or weekly basis, they’d swiftly break down, losing a significant portion of their capacity within a few years. Given that the average age of a car on the road today is 12 years, and that EV batteries are generally warrantied for eight to 10 years, automakers have shied away from using those chemistries. The ones that don’t break down quickly rely on costly and volatile materials like nickel.
But most people don’t need hundreds of miles of range on a daily basis. In fact, the average person drives only 29 miles per day. That means people really only need to dip into that deep reserve a handful of times per year.
For that, Ijaz has said that ONE is looking at using large amounts of manganese in the cathode (the negative terminal in the battery). Manganese is a cheap, abundant metal that’s often found alongside iron, and when used in a battery, it can help store lots of lithium ions, boosting energy density. While many batteries today use manganese in the cathode to do just that, it’s usually in conjunction with other metals like nickel, which is volatile but allows for even greater energy density, and cobalt, which is expensive but stabilizes the structure.
Manganese remains a promising battery material — researchers have been able to develop several types of high-capacity manganese cathodes that are pretty safe — but most car companies haven’t considered it because manganese cathodes tend to break down after a few hundred charge cycles.
With durable LFP cells handling daily duties, ONE doesn’t have to worry as much about the longevity of the high energy density part of the pack. In this context, manganese cathode batteries made a lot of sense. They may not have the life span of today’s EV batteries, but they’re cheap, energy dense and safe. ONE’s patents detail how the two batteries would work together to power the car for both shorter daily use and longer, less frequent road trips, all without compromising on longevity.
In daily use, the LFP traction battery would do all of the work. The battery management system, or BMS, would monitor the charge state and health of the LFP cells. Should they begin to get close to empty, the BMS would call on the range-extender portion of the pack to start pitching in. But rather than drive the motors directly, the range-extender battery would send its juice to the traction battery.
That setup helps prevent the range-extender battery from failing prematurely. Many high energy density chemistries are prone to breaking when they’re charged and discharged quickly. LFP batteries, on the other hand, aren’t easily damaged by surges caused by acceleration (which discharges the battery) and regenerative braking (which charges the battery). By using the LFP battery to absorb the peaks, ONE is able to let the high-density battery charge and discharge at a leisurely pace.
“By being able to independently control the high energy density hybrid modules, and independently measure the health or state of its individual cells, a charging and discharge rate [of] the cells can be regulated,” one patent application says. “This prevents triggering failure events associated with high energy density chemistries due to excessive charging and discharging.”
What’s more, ONE envisions the BMS coordinating with the vehicle’s infotainment system. If the destination in the navigation system is farther than the LFP battery can go, then the BMS can plan accordingly, letting the high-capacity part of the pack trickle-charge the LFP portion. Or if the car is far from home with a depleted LFP battery, the high-capacity battery can start to do its work while the car is parked. ONE also has provisions to “rebuild” one battery or another as a form of preventative maintenance using special charge profiles.
Tech advantage
While Ijaz clearly hopes that his company’s research into manganese cathodes pays off, ONE’s true advantage appears to be its sophisticated BMS. Of course, the patent applications are no guarantee that patents will be issued — or that ONE has a working prototype — but their existence suggests that the company is confident that it can pull it off.
The dual-chemistry battery may get the headlines, but if the manganese cathode research doesn’t come to fruition, ONE’s BMS could feasibly optimize for any high energy density battery chemistry. In the end, it might not be exotic battery chemistry that helps people get over their range anxiety, but clever use of silicon and software.