As we shift away from gas- and diesel-powered engines and toward electrification, a recurring problem comes up: Batteries are heavy, and heavy is the enemy of efficiency. The quest for cheaper, lighter, more efficient, and safer batteries becomes increasingly necessary, and there’s a research rush happening right now.
You only have to look at the billions of dollars that car manufacturers — including Ford, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan and VW — have poured into battery-focused research and development to see the destination and the drive. In a nutshell: There’s a lot going on.
Movers and shakers on the battery circuit
The pursuit of better EV batteries has lasted for years, both inside the R&D labs at the automotive manufacturers and out in startup land.
Nissan has prototyped its own solid-state battery at its factory in Yokohama, Japan, which it hopes can go into production by 2028. Other car manufacturers have opted to put their funds into powering startups.
Factorial Energy, which emerged from stealth in April 2021, has an investment and partnership deal with Hyundai and Kia to co-develop and test battery tech in Hyundai EVs. However, it also has joint collaboration agreements with Mercedes-Benz, which was a “double-digit million-dollar investment” and an unspecified investment from Stellantis, which it hopes will see a rollout of solid-state technology in 2026. Based in Woburn, Massachusetts, Factorial has operations in South Korea and Japan and a subsidiary in Germany that was announced in March 2023.
VW has put $300 million into QuantumScape, beginning with $100 million in funding in 2018, followed by $200 million more in 2020. The plan was to have a production line for solid-state batteries established by 2025, again proving that it’s definitely not a quick road to success.
SES developed solid-state technology that works to eliminate graphite by painting the anode side of the battery with a proprietary substance. This coating allows the necessary accumulation of lithium without the buildup of potentially dangerous dendrites, which can puncture the separator and short circuit the whole system.
Solid Power is backed by BMW and Ford. Joint development agreements pointed to automotive-scale batteries coming off of Solid Power’s pilot production line to be delivered in early 2022, but that’s not yet happened. The company went public at the end of 2021 and SES went public in 2022. Both of them reported a loss shortly thereafter. The losses were not necessarily a shock, and they didn’t appear to spook either the markets or investors, but a loss is a loss. And it demonstrates just how volatile the battery manufacturing scene is.
Battery startups
The LG Energy Solution Battery Challenge offers a good look into the startup ecosystem. Its third iteration kicked off in October 2022, with 117 startups from 23 countries. All of the entrants were from different areas of battery development; 10 were selected as finalists, receiving prize money, the potential chance to collaborate with LGES, and possibly be considered for investment opportunities.
One of those 10 finalists was 18-person startup Natrion, founded by Alex Kosyakov and Thomas Rouffiac. Natrion was selected for its polymer-ceramic solid-state electrolyte material, called the lithium solid ionic composite, as well as the company’s demonstration of high-performance solid-state lithium-metal battery cells enabled by LISIC. If Natrion can scale up its production, which it believes it can, then it could bring about considerable changes to battery technology.
Natrion’s success in the LG Energy Solution Battery Challenge follows raising over $3 million in seed funding in venture capital money, in addition to about half a million in the Department of Defense grants and contracts. “We’re raising a Series A round that will be a priced round,” Kosyakov told TechCrunch+. “And that will be specifically to build our first production line for solid electrolyte material.”
Right now, the batteries that power electric vehicles are lithium-ion batteries that make use of liquid electrolytes. There’s a negative anode, which is usually graphite, separated from a positive cathode by a liquid electrolyte. The goal for battery manufacturers is to be able to swap the liquid electrolyte for a solid one, and in Natrion’s case, the graphite for lithium metal, but it isn’t a simple exchange.
“Lithium-ion batteries right now are all made with liquid electrolyte in the middle of the battery, through which charge moves,” Kosyakov said. “The liquid is very unstable against lithium metal, but it’s stable against graphite. And you have very fast degradation of the battery if you try to use liquid with lithium metal.”
Solid advantage
Near the top of the list for most applications is safety. By replacing the liquid electrolyte with a solid one, it reduces the prospect of dendrites — shards of lithium that resemble stalactites — growing on a battery’s electrodes. To prevent the dendrites from spreading from the positive to the negative electrodes, manufacturers usually include a separator between them. However, should the separator become damaged, the battery can short-circuit, which is what happened with the Chevy Bolt battery packs. Not exactly a win.
“We’re finding out a lot about EV safety right now,” Kosyakov said. “EVs are less prone to catching fire than ICE [internal combustion engine] vehicles from a probability standpoint, but the severity of a fire if you have one within an EV is much worse. And so how do we bring down that severity? Well, you can go to solid state, get rid of the liquid, and that solves that.”
But in addition to safety, solid-state batteries are also more efficient than liquid electrolyte lithium-ion batteries if you can switch the graphite to lithium metal. “But with lithium metal, you can store about 10 times more charge per pound than graphite,” he said. “So that’s what’s really exciting about lithium metal.”
This increase in energy density is especially valuable for EVs, because lithium metal battery cells have at least 50% more energy density than lithium ion. That means 50% longer driving range for the car.
Companies could use these more energy-dense batteries to overcome range anxiety or make smaller batteries. Smaller batteries might not get you as far, but they allow for an improved weight-to-range ratio in smaller vehicles that are less resource-intensive.
“If you can get more miles on a single charge, that means your battery has to do less charge discharge cycles over its life span,” Kosyakov said. “It’s better for the battery’s life and health. It’s also better for the consumer because with lithium metal you can also charge more quickly and with less hindrances…So we can have fast charging as well. So that’s what’s really exciting.”
When it comes to battery packs, liquid electrolyte batteries require cooling in a way that solid-state batteries don’t. By removing the cooling mechanisms, Natrion is trying to make solid-state batteries even more efficient and cheaper.
Scaling solid-state
“What our technology addresses is that nobody’s figured out how to produce lithium metal batteries at scale, and in a way that they’re stable,” Kosyakov said.
But by looking at existing battery factories that launched alongside the EV boom, Natrion thinks that adapting technology rather than starting from scratch will help it scale.
“What we found is a way to make solid-state batteries with [the] current process that exists with the current lithium-ion battery infrastructure, and then a way to get rid of other barriers and hindrances to commercial viability,” Kosyakov said. “For example, you’ll see solid-state batteries that need special conditions to work. Maybe they need the cell to be under pressure, to be clamped down. That’s really tough to achieve inside of an EV. Our batteries: They don’t need that kind of clamping, or they don’t need special temperatures to operate and that sort of thing.”
Lighter batteries help cars have much longer range, and safer batteries just make sense in the context of cars zooming along at motorway speeds. Whether the end goal is lighter cars that can deliver the same range with fewer battery cells, or cars that have longer range, it’s an all-around win for motorists. Manufacturers making batteries are all facing the same scalability issues, and for the average motorist, the tech can’t come along soon enough.