The solid-state batteries hype is fading – prompting auto giants to consider alternatives
by exploding_myths
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Electric Vehicles
The solid-state batteries hype is fading – prompting auto giants to consider alternatives
26 Comments
SS batteries have always just been a delaying tactic by certain car manufacturers.
We dont need them, they shouldn’t delay electrification, and our current cells (esp LFP) are plenty good enough and safe enough.
The hype will return if they ever make it into a real production vehicle.
Took them long enough to realize this. A lot of the hype around solid state was just to keep people from buying EVs …playing on the fear that “the next thing is just around the corner and I’ll be stuck with outdated technology!”
The next generation of battery tech has always been just around the corner according to the manufacturers. If you want an EV, buy what’s currently available, don’t stress.
Short term it may be hype but the technology will have to make its way into cars(high performance ones to begin with). As we consider EV’s as tech and tech is always evolving.
Solid state electrolytes were always more expensive (being finely fabricated thin materials) than liquids, and being solids, the ions diffused across them less easily than liquids, so the low temperature performance was lousy.
The real win would have been to avoid having to use graphite anode, metallic lithium only.
Shocker…
Is it? I swear I saw 5 solid state battery headlines just last week.
Hype is not relevant, so the absence of hype isn’t relevant either. Quantumscape have deliveried a series of commercial samples to OEMs and are preparing pilot production, I think they will be the first to market.
Typical Toyota dick move. Just like Hydrogen
Toyota will stick with it another decade or so
Nonsense. Toyota will will build a million cars per year with solid state batteries in <now>+2 years. And they have been targeting this since 2017.
Lithium batteries are dropping in price as manufacturing continues to scale up. Hard for Better but more expensive to beat good enough.
Yes if you fell into the hype 5-10 years ago it was always around the corner. But if you actually did research in the field you would know it was never really ready. But now it’s definitely around the corner and coming soon to limited production vehicles within 3-4 years I would say. Test vehicles even sooner.
MG announced solid state battery in production cars by 2025. Just a few more months and we’ll see if it’s all bs or not.
If you believed in solid state batteries, then you’re the one to blame.
Its gonna take Tesla to do it for the other car companies to follow.
Stellantis invested into Lyten for Li-Sulfur batteries but they claim that it wasn’t enough funding to make it ready for auto applications.
Polestar invested into StoreDot silicon anode but that’s still in preproduction hell and Polestar might die before it even happens.
The Koreans are banking on Samsung hybrid cells and that’s gonna be a while yet. Toyota is still waiting for whatever it was(I don’t remember) but they recently bought out the Panasonic deal so something is happening.
And VW is still working with QuantumScape but even then VW hasn’t been making sound decisions lately so I have very little faith in them.
We are going to be with NMC chemistries for a while longer.
Lithium sulfur seems like it will arrive to market faster. I think that will be the next chemistry after LFP to gain widespread adoption.
Timing chains, drive belts, turbocharger housings, transmission mechatronics, differentials, transaxles, cam shafts and cam gears + hundreds of other parts to break. All to just go slower than an EV. ICE is obsolete even without solid state batteries at this point.
When solid-state batteries got their first hype cycle almost 10 years ago people sweated about how fast EV batteries might degrade and a Supercharger session was about 45 minutes.
SSB were said to last for centuries and promised much faster charging times.
So now we have evidence that regular EV batteries should outlast the rest of the vehicle. China battery makers are boasting 10-15 minutes to 80% SOC and the intention to get to 5-10 minutes soon.
So whatever problems SSB solve are already mostly solved. LFP cells showed that we don’t need higher performance and manufacturers just keep making them better and cheaper. Not too many people will want premium priced SSBs when the regular stuff is more than good enough.
SSB’s are yet another tech that missed its window of opportunity. Fusion would have been a great tech if it was developed back in the 1960s or 1970s, now it couldn’t compete with solar or wind.
Trees sequestered almost no carbon in [2023](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2407.12447) I say we teach them a lesson and release the wood burning cars!
I’ve said this for a long time, solid state batteries will not live up to the hype, by the time they get here they will only provide marginal improvements and cost more then contemporary alternatives.
The big shift in the auto market will come for cheaper chemistries like LFP and eventually sodium in super cheap economy EVs.
It is and was a solution for a problem that doesn’t exist. Lithium batteries work fine. If the scientists figure out a solution that works, the industry will pivot. But under current tech, EVs work. So build them.
sounds like China has zero interest/footprint in SSB ? why ?
“Why bother with making batteries that are *good*, when we can just make batteries that are *good enough* instead? We don’t want these things to last forever, only until the warranty ends and not a cycle longer.” – some auto executive somewhere, right this instant
Hmm, this may not be quite true. Only the other week Geely [MG to you and me] announced that in 2025, all MG models will be fitted with solid state batteries. Now, you can take that with a pinch of salt or not but, afaik every annnouncement made by MG so far has come true. IIRC it’s CATL which will be supplying the new batteries. There were some amazing specs talked about weights, ranges and charging performances, but I’m not going out on a limb to remember them, as I’m almost certain to remember wrong on a slightly controversial subject. Personally, I find it hard to believe too. Then again CATL hasn’t made false promises afaik either. Could be Semi Solid State, I suppose. But if anyone is going to crack the expansion problem, one of the first will be CATL.