If I said that solid state batteries (or
SSBs) were coming to the market soon, would you believe me? What if I told you that
some of the most advanced SSBs ever made are right around the corner? And that the pilot
programs and production facilities are already in the works? I wouldn’t believe me either, but
it's true. For the longest time, SSBs have been one of those revolutionary breakthroughs that
was always just another five or so years away. But now two companies, QuantumScape and Solid
Power, are on schedule for commercialization. So how exactly are they bringing their SSBs
to the market? And what makes them special? I’m Matt Ferrell … welcome to Undecided. This video is brought to you by
Brilliant, but more on that later. Solid state batteries have been hyped up for years
and it’s easy to see why. Compared to the current gold standard of lithium-ion (LI) batteries,
solid state batteries are more energy dense, longer-lasting, safer, smaller, and
have the potential to charge faster. I think we’d all appreciate an EV that
can charge to full in just a few minutes, or a laptop that only needs to be charged once
or twice a week. Either that or a laptop or phone that has the same battery life we have today, but
is impossibly thin because of a smaller battery. Unfortunately, solid state batteries are one of
those technological breakthroughs that’s had some trouble actually breaking through. While a vast
variety of solid state batteries made from all sorts of different materials have performed well
in lab settings, getting them onto the market has proven to be challenging. Both Solid Power and
QuantumScape have supposedly solved that issue, but for this to make sense, let’s brush up
on some solid state battery basics first. We’ve talked about SSBs on the channel, many, many
times, so I’ll keep this brief. In an ordinary battery, you have a cathode and anode. These are
separated by a, uh, _separator_ ... and a liquid electrolyte solution that allows ions to flow
freely between the two sides during charge and discharge. Liquid electrolytes, however, are prone
to leakage, thermal runaway and dendrite growth. Dendrites are essentially metal spikes that grow
as the battery is cycled over time. They can cause the battery to short out, or even puncture it,
which in rare cases can result in explosions. So, why not replace the liquid electrolyte
with a more stable solid? Congratulations, you now understand the “solid” of solid
state. And as we noted just a moment ago, solid state batteries tend to be lighter and
more energy dense than the competition. This is because a solid electrolyte can get the same
amount of umph as a liquid one in less space. This makes them pretty tantalizing for
EVs, where weight and power are critical.
Seems like its all upsides, so what’s stopping
these batteries from hitting the mass market? It mostly comes down to materials and manufacturing.
solid state battery components are finicky. They require very specific manufacturing techniques and
specialized machinery. Typically, their cores are made out of ceramic or glass and are challenging
to mass produce. And for most solid electrolytes, even a little bit of moisture can lead to
failures or safety issues. As a result, solid state batteries need to be manufactured
in extremely controlled conditions. The actual manufacturing process is also very labor-intensive
right now, especially compared to traditional lithium-ion batteries. That all adds up to make
manufacturing them prohibitively expensive. So how are QuantumScape and Solid Power
dealing with these challenges? What solid state battery formulations did they go with?
And why are their batteries leading the pack? Let’s dive into QuantumScape first. It feels like
everytime we talk about solid state batteries, they seem to show up. Based in California,
QuantumScape has spent years leading up to their first commercial product, the
QSE-5 solid state battery. Previously, QuantumScape has said they were aiming
for commercial battery production in 2024, and credit where it's due, they’re
pretty close to hitting that deadline. One of QuantumScape’s core innovations is their
anode-free battery, which sounds bananas. As I mentioned earlier all batteries have an
anode and cathode. Normally a silicon or graphite anode stores the lithium atoms
until they are ready to be discharged. Instead, they’re using a highly
dendrite-resistant solid electrolyte separator. This allows the lithium metal
itself to act as the anode. Ordinarily, the lithium has to diffuse through another
anode material, which creates a bottleneck that slows charging speed. But Quantumscape’s method
eliminates this bottleneck, so its battery is far more energy dense. The end result: shorter travel
distance for ions and overall faster charging. solid state batteries charge fast alright —
that’s part of the draw. But by eliminating the anode bottleneck, QuantumScape's battery
can charge to full in less than 15 minutes. This is especially important for the world of
electric vehicles (EVs). Along with range-anxiety, one of the remaining EV-adoption
hurdles is charge time. As long as it’s faster to fill a gas tank than
charge a battery, some people are going to have their doubts about EVs. That’s why
QuantumScape is angling for the EV market. Speaking of the market, that’s another
benefit of the anode-less design: Quatumscape doesn’t need to spend money on
making an anode. Considering that cost is one of the things holding back solid state
batteries, every little bit helps. It also saves some space and weight, which again,
are important considerations in the EV-world. And there’s even more benefits to QuantumScape’s
design, which I’ll get to in a minute. While solid state batteries are still making their
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to DeleteMe and to all of you for supporting the channel. Like I mentioned earlier, there’s
other benefits to QuantumScape’s design. And there’s yet more benefits to QuantumScape’s
design: it increases the batteries lifespan. The anode is where a lot of those nasty,
life-shortening chemical reactions take place. Without that anode, QuantumScape claims
their battery can go for 2,000+ cycles. Most lithium EV batteries can run for around 1,500
to 2,000 cycles, so QSE-5 isn’t lagging here. Another neat feature of the QSE-5 is its
housing. Lithium-metal batteries like the QSE-5 have a tendency to balloon up if you
fast-charge them. If you’re planning to stack a bunch of these batteries together, like for an
EV battery pack, this can be difficult to engineer around. So QuantumScape has forgone the usual
cylindrical battery frame, opting for a combo box-and-pouch they’re calling the FlexFrame.
There's a central pouch that’s built to swell, and when it does, it rises until it's flush with
the boxy frame. This little engineering trick ensures that the batteries have room to grow
and shrink while remaining tightly stackable. Pretty clever when you’re trying to maximize
the space, weight and energy density for an EV. Let’s turn now to Colorado-based Solid Power.
Rather than changing up their architecture, they’ve got a novel battery formulation. The
company has three batteries that are approaching commercialization, all with a sulfide-based
solid electrolyte separator. We'll focus on their Silicon EV battery though, because
that’s the furthest along. Their solid sulfide separator offers the usual solid state battery
benefits along with its own interesting perks. Sulfides have great ionic conductivity, with
some even close to liquid electrolytes. This means that lithium ions can travel through
sulfide-based separators with less resistance, helping with faster charging times. They’re
also flexible, so they can roll with punches instead of snapping like more common and brittle
glass or ceramic solid state battery separators. These materials have shown remarkable heat
resistance, which is great because batteries, even solid state ones, do tend to get
pretty hot. And recent studies suggest sulfides can be moisture resistant when properly
treated. Considering how temperamental solid electrolytes can be around moisture, this has
the potential to make manufacturing much easier. Ease of manufacturing might be sulfide's
greatest strength. Sulfide solid state batteries can be produced with roll-to-roll
battery manufacturing equipment, which is very common in the industry. And sulfides
can be manufactured relatively cheaply from abundant materials too, helping them avoid
many supply chain issues. All together, Solid Power claims they can manufacture its
solid state batteries for cost savings of 15-35% less than their competitors. Seeing as
the price is one of the major limiting factors of solid state batteries, that kind of
cost saving is nothing to sneeze at. Now that you have a handle on who
we’re dealing with, let’s dive into the nitty-gritty stats. Which battery is
better for an EV? Which will hit the market first? And what challenges still remain?
## QuantumScape & Solid Power Pros & Cons Rather than slow things down by listing off the
stats one-by-one, we’ve got a graphic for you. In addition to the QSE-5 and
Solid Power’s EV battery, I’ve also added Solid Power’s other batteries.
And for the sake of context, we compare these batteries with Tesla’s 4680 cylindrical cells,
currently used in the popular Tesla Model Y, and now with the Cybertruck. If this looks
intimidating, don’t worry. We’ll break it down. Let’s look first at volumetric density. This
is a measure of how much energy a battery can store within one liter of its volume. The
denser the battery, the bigger the “tank,” so to speak. Tesla weighs in at around 622 Wh/L,
the QSE-5 beats that by about 200 watt-hours, and that in turn is bested by Solid Power
by around a hundred watt-hours and change. There's no definitive evidence or statement
for how far a car with QSE-5 or Solid Power EV battery will go on a single charge.
However, the less dense Tesla Model Ys are estimated to run for 300 to 330 miles
(or 482 to 531 KM) on a single charge, so it’s likely the solid state batteries
will rove for a fair bit further. Next we have cycle life … and I’m not talking
about e-bikes. This is the amount of times a battery can be fully charged and then
fully discharged before its capacity starts to fall off significantly. You can
see that Tesla clocks in between 1000-2000 cycles. Solid Power fits on the lower end
while the QSE-5 leans toward the upper end. Now let’s talk charge time. Tesla’s batteries
can “supercharge" in 15 to 25 minutes, but it's not recommended. Charging
your car this fast on a daily basis can really shorten its lifespan. Tesla
says you should go for a more casual home charging method that’ll give you a
full charge in 8 to 12 hours. But solid state batteries? Both QSE-5 and Solid Power’s
batteries can readily do charge times of 15 minutes with minimal side effects, though they
achieve this through very different methods. For Solid Power, sulfides’ softness
is the solution (try saying that 10 times fast). Just like it's easier
to swim through water than Jell-O, it's easier for ions to move through the softer
sulfides than some other separators. Fast, smooth-sailin’ ions equals fast charge
times. Meanwhile, QuantumScape is fast because their oxide separator can handle
higher voltages. This is a clunky explanation, but a higher voltage means we can “force”
more ions through the separator. In this case, more ions equals fast charge times. Higher
voltages tend to speed up dendrite growth and cut into the battery’s lifespan, but
the QSE-5 is tough enough to handle ‘em. Last, but far from least, there’s
the release dates. Which battery is making it to the market first? Both companies
are already capable of making small batches of their batteries. QuantumScape hasn’t
issued an official commercialization timeline. The company is pleased with
the small batches it can do right now and is preparing to introduce and scale-up
their “Cobra” production system in 2025. QuantumScape claims that this will allow them
to mass-produce solid state batteries at the gigawatt scale. From there it shouldn’t be
too much longer to full commercialization. Solid Power hasn’t issued an official mass
market goal date either, though their CEO, John Van Scoter, told the Denver Post last
September that he predicts 2028 will be the year that EVs are regularly powered by solid
state batteries, Solid Power’s included. So while neither battery is hitting the market next
year, these are significant milestones, and it’s looking like we truly have broken away from
the “just another 5 years, please” catchphrase. I do want to temper some of the excitement by
drawing attention to the engineering problems that still remain for each style of solid state
battery. For sulfides, their vulnerability to dendrites still needs to be addressed. We’ve found
a few ways to tackle this issue but none of them are perfect. Running the sulfide battery extra hot
fights dendrite growth, but it also means adding extra heat management devices. That cuts into the
cost and weight. We could put the sulfide battery under pressure, but that’s tricky to do outside
of the lab. Running the battery on low power could also work. Though, it’s a bummer to have a high
performance battery and not let it perform highly. QuantumScape’s oxides have their own issues. Most
notably, it’s still challenging to mass produce them. This is because they must be sintered
together<!--insert footage of sintering--> at very high temperatures, an expensive and energy
intensive process. Meanwhile, sulfides can be made relatively cheaply and easily with some common
industry techniques like roll-to-roll processing. ## Which is Better?
So, which battery is better? There’s no clear cut answer. They’re
at slightly different stages of maturity, with different strengths and weaknesses. As
we often find with these sorts of things, neither is a silver bullet. I think
each one will settle into its own niche. I want to re-emphasize that the outlook for
both batteries is promising, at least at the time of writing. Last year, QuantumScape
deployed the very-cool sounding “Raptor,” a high speed throughput separator process that
allowed them to efficiently produce some QSE-5 prototypes for its auto company partners like
Volkswagen. It’s planning on shipping their A2 round of samples to its partners for further
testing this year. But if you liked Raptor, you’re gonna love Cobra. We mentioned it a
moment ago, but Cobra is the upgrade to Raptor, and should help QuantumScape affordably mass
produce its oxide separator at triple the current speed.[^31 That said, the QuantumScape team does
caution that the Cobra is a work in progress, so it’s not like the manufacturing
challenges are done and dusted. For their part, late last year Solid Power inked
a deal with SK Group, the biggest company in Korea behind Samsung. This three-year contract
gave Solid Power a $20 million boost on top of an earlier $130 million investment from Ford.
Thanks to this kind of support, Solid Power is already capable of producing 1.1 million metric
tons of their sulfide electrolyte per month! The company’s own A1 cells are already out the door,
and it’s planning to have its A2 cells out soon. With that in mind, I still want to be careful
and not overhype solid state batteries and feed into the idea that they’re a holy grail and
_the_ thing to hold out hope for. solid state batteries are going to be huge when they
hit, but they need a little more time. So if you’ve been waiting until solid state
batteries are around to switch to EVs or install home energy storage, I’d quit waiting
and get the product that fits your needs today. But what do you think? Do you think solid state
is the next big thing and worth waiting for? Jump into the comments and let me know and be
sure to listen to my follow up podcast Still TBD where we’ll keep this conversation
going. I’ll see you in the next one.
