Checking the Electric Vehicle Battery Forecast Today, Tomorrow, and the Far Future: Mostly Sunny

The trend line toward automotive electrification is pointing up and to the right, even if its slope isn’t constant. So electrical and chemical engineers are beavering away to make electric mobility as safe, convenient, and carefree as combustion driving is today. Here’s a look at the tech we expect to emerge in the months, years, and decades ahead.

See All 8 Photos8

Today

Lithium-iron-phosphate will continue its meteoric rise in global market share, from 6 percent in 2020 to 30 percent in 2022. Energy density runs about 30 to 60 percent less than prevalent nickel-manganese-cobalt chemistries, but it’s safer, and abundantly available materials improve both cost and sustainability.

A promising best-of-both-worlds approach is the Our Next Energy Gemini battery, featuring novel nickel-manganese cells with great energy density but reduced cycle life, working alongside LFP cells that will happily charge to 100 percent daily. The LFP cells would be used for daily driving, while the others would pitch in during occasional long trips. Financial woes delayed production, but hopefully a strategic partnership with Foxconn will get it back on track.

A switch away from packaging cells in modules (and then packaging those modules into another case) and toward cell-to-pack assembly promises improved energy density—especially when using more space-efficient cylindrical or pouch-style batteries.

Solid-state batteries have been “coming soon” forever, but forever is finally here as China’s IM Motors L6 sedan is poised to become the first production vehicle to employ a solid-state setup, with a 130-kWh pack good for 622 miles on China’s cycle (maybe 400-plus by EPA standards). IM Motors claims it uses a patented “nano-scale electrolyte” with “high ionic conductivity and high-temperature resistance.” It also says the battery’s cathode is coated with nickel, while the anode is made from a “high-specific-energy composite silicon carbon material.” It also supports 400-kW charging that can reportedly add as much as 249 miles of range in just 12 minutes.

Companies like QuantumScape, Solid Power, and Toyota are poised for solid-state battery production in the nearer term, as well. We’re also watching the ongoing development of copper cellulose as a highly sustainable solid-state electrode material.

See All 8 Photos8

Tomorrow

Battery innovations require years of development. Here are some that may complete this process within 10 years, starting with novel chemistries.

Lyten is making strides bringing lithium-sulfur to market. One sulfur atom can host two lithium ions, while it takes more than one NMC molecule to grab one lithium ion. This greatly improves energy density. And Lyten’s innovative graphene cathode may have solved a sulfur-depletion problem that initially hampered cycle life. It’s been shipping pilot-line production samples to automakers.

See All 8 Photos8

Sodium ion is even cheaper than LFP, but with 80 percent of LFP’s already lower energy density, it’s only expected to see automotive use in the lightest, cheapest applications, in automotive 12-volt batteries, and perhaps in dual-ion batteries.

Novel electrode materials are also on the horizon. Today’s batteries typically use a metal oxide cathode active material (CAM) like lithium-nickel-manganese-cobalt-oxide or lithium-iron-phosphate. The anode active materials that collect these ions during charging are often carbon-based graphite. Silicon attracts more lithium ions but physically expands in the process, which can damage the cell.

Silicon nanowire anodes promise to deliver higher energy storage while swelling less, but the cost is still excessive. Lithium metal anodes participate in the chemical process, improving energy density, but coatings to prevent the formation of metal “whiskers” that can short-circuit the cell need further development.

See All 8 Photos8

Bipolar batteries promise improved energy density by stacking cells and directly connecting one anode to the next cathode—like stacking batteries in a flashlight—instead of each getting its own casing and external connection. Toyota (which has produced bipolar NiMH batteries) claims a forthcoming bipolar LFP battery will boost range by 20 percent and lower cost by 40 percent relative to the battery powering its present bZ4X EV.

In a new dual-ion battery (DIB), instead of positive ions doing all the work migrating from cathode to anode during charging and back again during discharge, the cell employs both positive cations and negative anions. Charging collects cations on the anode and anions on the cathode, while discharging dissociates both back into the electrolyte. Both electrodes can be carbon-fiber based, or one can be aluminum (opening the door to structural batteries). Advantages include extremely quick charging, higher voltage, current density per area, and energy density, with cycle life being the greatest remaining challenge.

The Far Future

All the above advances should help improve energy density, charging times, cost, and safety, which will—along with a maturing infrastructure—make both city commuting and road-tripping in electric cars as unremarkable as it is in today’s petro-fueled family trucksters. We’re also rooting for the scientists toiling to make the breakthrough that would bring commercial nuclear fusion to market, solving our sustainable- electricity woes once and for all.