Forever Battery for EVs, Is It a Reality That Promises Big Change?

One could do a basic internet search and come up with plenty of stories on the top 8, Top 10 or Top 12 solid state battery companies in 2023. Here at Cheers and Gears we have done 9 such stories covering College Research turned into Battery Startup's that all have their own take on the ultimate Forever battery of Solid State design.

What is a solid-state battery and why is it considered a Forever battery?

To understand this discussion, we have to start with understanding the difference between a Conventional and solid-state battery.

Traditional EV batteries, pretty much any battery today as it has been used for the last century is made up of a cathode, anode, and electrolyte. The electrolyte under fast charging has an additional issue and that is one of catching on fire.

In the case of a traditional EV Lithium-ion battery, the electrolyte is a liquid solution connecting the two. All batteries have worked this way for decades.

Due to the electrolyte's physical limitations, we have reached the limit of the energy cell density. If consumers want their phones, watches, electric cars, etc. to last longer, charge faster, we need a fundamentally different battery cell.

Welcome to the Solid-state battery or what industry observers and creators are calling the "Forever Battery". But why call it this term?

Solid-state batteries have the potential to allow powering a heavily used cell phone for days, charging your smartwatch in seconds rather than 10's of minutes and yes, filling up an EV in minutes with driving for hundreds if not thousands of miles depending on the battery pack size. They also do not have the fire issue that you have with todays current batteries.

Yet with this, there is still a big problem with batteries and that is a known issue called DENDRITES. 

This video shows that through charging and discharging, dendrites is an issue that hits both traditional batteries of today with a liquid electrolyte and solid-state batteries. This video shows the growth of dendrites during the charging and discharging process. Once dendrites grow from the anode to the cathode they short out and will no longer hold a charge. This is also why over time batteries loose capacity of electrical charge.

Over the last couple of decades, college scientists working with venture capital firms across the globe have invested heavily in R&D to build solid-state batteries that are far more energy dense, does not have the dendrite issues that cause cracking in the battery and short circuiting. 

In just the last two years, college R&D has moved to prototype production lines as multiple research groups have moved into the startup phase with what they believe to be is a solution that cracked the code of a dendrite free solid-state battery. These designs allow for a fire safe, solid energy dense battery that is what the media has termed "Forever Batteries" as the current testing is showing that such battery packs should last a million miles at least if not longer, reducing the need to replace them every 7 to 10 years.

Solid-state batteries allow for a reduction in packaging size, while gaining energy density, fire safety, along with the packaging improvements.

There is also the benefit of multi-layering which increases energy density storage in both traditional batteries and solid-state. Solid-state wins here due to the reduced packaging size while increasing the energy storage capacity.

While the solid-state battery research started with a single layer battery cell, the last few years saw them move to 4-layer and 10-layer battery cells and many of these soli-state startups are now producing working prototypes of 16-layer cells of which the auto industry is testing. 

Companies such as QuantumScape a R&D group from Standford University and now a tech startup of solid-state batteries has shipped their first deliveries of batteries to auto companies for testing. A company that went into startup mode in 2010, QuantumScape is hoping to go full mass production of their solid-state, 16 layer cells in 2024. 

Many would ask and rightly so would want to know how this technology translates into real world applications. Solid-State batteries would on size alone be about a 20 to 25% reduction in physical size if kW to kW was the same over liquid. But then you have the energy density gains which are from 50% to 80% increase over the old standard Lithium-ion liquid battery.

This would mean if you had a 200 mile range Lithium-ion liquid battery, a solid-state battery would be 20 to 25% smaller and deliver 300 to 400 miles of range depending on the application at a minimum. 

Research on the life of current batteries is still limited due to the amount of EVs on the roads today and volume of battery production, but indications are that it is good and will only get better.

How Long Do EV Battery Packs Last?

Per the most current study, we have the following data:

• Battery replacements are quite rare. In our community of 15,000 cars, only 1.5% have been replaced (outside of big recalls like Chevy Bolt).
• Degradation is not linear. We're including battery degradation curves that illustrate how well these batteries hold up over time. There's some drop in the beginning then it levels out for a long period.
• Most replacements occur under warranty. For example, a new Rivian has battery coverage for 175,000 miles or 10 years. The federal minimum warranty is 8 years or 100,000 miles.
• This is why Recurrent Reports are essential. Recurrent can give you insights into an EV battery without costly or invasive tests.

Auto makers are stating that they expect EVs to last between 15 to 20 years moving forward. Yet we do have the data going back over the last two decades.

This data has then been broken down by year of battery replacements where we see that the Nissan air temperature controlled battery and the Tesla S liquid temperature controlled battery have the highest percentage of battery replacements.

The study shows the following details of battery replacements as follows:

• 2013 Tesla Model S (8.5%)
• 2014 Tesla Model S (7.3%)
• 2015 Tesla Model S (3.5%)
• 2011 Nissan LEAF (8.3%)
• 2012 Nissan LEAF (3.5%)

This does take into account the 2017 Chevrolet Bolt recall, and the 2019 Hyundai Kona recall.

The Nissan Leaf and Tesla S both had early recalls on battery packs due to the early day chemistry of those cells before they changed over to the current hearty cell chemistry that everyone is currently using.

There is much data at the link above if you wish to see more granular breakdown by actual OEM EV models. The benefit is that if an EV works for you needs today, you will get a long useful life out of the EV that is greater than many see with ICE auto's.

This leads us to the "Forever Battery", the solid-state darlings that are just now ramping up testing sample production for auto companies across the globe.

The following list of solid state battery companies that have moved into production from development today:

• Home - Solid Power (solidpowerbattery.com)
• Building the Best Solid State Battery | QuantumScape
• Ampcera – Solid State Electrolytes and Batteries
• Solid-State Li-Ion batteries utilizing proprietary polymer matrix electrolyte (PME) technology (brightvolt.com)
• ProLogium Technology Co., Ltd
• Toyota Solid-State Battery
  • Toyota Battery Manufacturing, North Carolina (TBMNC) - Toyota USA Newsroom
• ilika Solid State Battery
• Home of the World's Smallest Solid-State Batteries - Cymbet

Keep in mind that this is just a sample of the Solid-State Battery startup companies above and there are more that are mentioned below that you can look at.

Not all companies will survive in their current state as some will be swallowed up by legacy battery companies that do not currently have this technology.

End result is that we are on the start of a major battery revolution that will promise to change not only the auto industry but the rest of the industry that needs batteries from the smallest used in hearing aids to the largest that would be used to store excess power till it is needed.

Stories on Solid State Batteries over the last 18 months: