Back in 1991, Sony introduced us all to
the first commercial lithium-ion battery when they used it to provide power for
one of their new-fangled camcorders. The technology caught on rather well, as I'm sure
you know, and nowadays lithium-ion batteries are in just about every conceivable electronic device,
from calculators to electric vehicles, and they've even carved out a niche in very large grid scale
energy storage. But according to most industry commentators lithium-ion batteries are not the
final answer to the energy storage question. Next generation batteries will need to find a way of
improving energy density, reducing charging time, and lengthening battery life while also
eliminating the slightly inconvenient potential hazard of spontaneous combustion that existing
lithium-ion batteries can suffer from. The answer to that conundrum, according to most industry
experts, will be solid state batteries. But it's a technology that's not generally expected to come
to market until the latter part of this decade at the very earliest. At least that was the accepted
wisdom until recently. Now though, a large and very well established Japanese battery and super
capacitor maker called Murata has announced it will begin mass producing a market ready all
solid-state battery by the Autumn of 2021. So have they really stolen a march on the competition, or
will this be yet another empty battery promise? Hello and welcome to Just Have a Think. There's
an awful lot of industry and media excitement around solid state batteries at the moment... well
to be more accurate there's been an awful lot of industry and media excitement around solid-state
batteries for about the last decade or so. But it seems that every time a major manufacturer
announces they're on the cusp of a breakthrough, with promises of real-world production runs
within months, their optimism turns out to have been unfounded and their plans for solid-state
technology are quietly put on a back burner. It happened with Fisker, who originally promised a
supercar powered by a solid state battery by 2020 then said it would be delayed until 2022, and now
they've dropped the idea altogether. It happened with Dyson, who bought a Michigan-based solid
state battery company called Satki 3 in 2015 and spent billions developing its own electric vehicle
before canning the project altogether, writing off all that investment capital, and parting ways with
Satki 3's founder, Marie Sastry, in 2017. The list of companies vying to be the first to market with
a workable solid state battery is lengthy, but none of them look like getting anything into real
world production until 2025 at the very earliest. So why is that? Well, it turns out that
solid state batteries are proving to be devilishly difficult things to develop. The
basic principle seems straightforward enough and looks very attractive when compared
directly to a traditional lithium-ion battery. Lithium-ion technology makes use
of an electrochemical reaction. Inside each battery there are two electrodes
- a negatively charged anode, typically made of graphite, and a positively charged cathode made
of some combination of lithium and other elements. The two electrodes are separated by
a liquid electrolyte solution with a semi-permeable membrane in the centre acting
as a separator between negative and positive. As the battery charges up, electrons flow from
the cathode out across the external power source and back to the anode. That causes the cathode
to release its lithium ions, which move to the anode by flowing across the electrolyte and
passing through the semi-permeable membrane. When a fully charged lithium ion battery is
connected up to a device electrons flow out from the anode through the connected device and back to
the cathode causing the lithium ions to flow back across the electrolyte. Once all the ions have
made that journey, electrons stop flowing and you've got a flat battery. Lithium ion batteries
are an attractive option because lithium is the most electropositive element, which means it very
easily gives up its negative electrons to produce positive ions lithium. It's also the lightest of
all the metals, so lithium ion batteries are much lighter than lead acid batteries and have a much
higher energy density. Those are extremely useful qualities whether you're making a mobile phone or
an electric vehicle, but the useful reactivity of lithium also has its downside. No doubt you've
heard of the dreaded dendrite issue for example. Over time, deposits of lithium ions can build up
on the face of the anode forming spikes that can eventually puncture the separator. If they manage
to get all the way across to the cathode then you get a short circuit - an instant discharge of
a very reactive material into a volatile and highly flammable liquid electrolyte, which is
something you definitely don't want. The result could be a nasty swollen battery pouch that has
to be replaced or if you're really unlucky you could find yourself with a small incendiary
device going off in your trouser pocket. Solid state batteries remove that problem by using
a solid electrolyte instead of liquid, hence the name. That makes the whole battery much safer.
It also makes it much more compact with a much higher energy density - perhaps as much as three
times that of a standard lithium-ion battery. Solid-state batteries can work at very high rates
of power as well. Research suggests that they may be capable of recharging up to six times faster
than current technologies and achieve far more charging cycles during their useful working life
- something that electric vehicle makers are particularly interested in for obvious reasons.
And because they don't have that volatile and highly flammable liquid electrolyte they no longer
need the cumbersome battery management systems that add weight and cost to existing lithium ion
batteries. They've actually been in existence for longer than you might think. They first
got used in pacemakers for heart patients way back in the 1970s. A sheet of lithium metal
is placed in direct contact with solid iodine. That effectively causes a short circuit and
forms a new layer of lithium iodide between them. Once that layer is formed a tiny, but constant,
current can still flow from the lithium anode to the iodine cathode for several years, making it
ideal to keep a dodgy ticker beating reliably. In 2011, Toyota made a breakthrough with a solid
sulphide based material that had the same ionic conductivity as a liquid electrolyte, and ever
since then the race has been on to perfect the technology. It's proven to be a technically very
difficult challenge though. Studies on sulphides for electric vehicle batteries have suggested that
if the battery packs were breached in some way and the sulphide escaped, it'd produce a very
unhealthy gas when exposed to air. Getting them wet is apparently another problem too, as one
Toyota engineer recently pointed out "materials for all solid-state batteries don't go well with
water". He said "it's difficult to maintain a dry state in a plant and other facilities". Murata's
battery doesn't use sulphides in its chemistry, and it's not aimed at the electric vehicle
market. Instead it'll sit in the space somewhere between the tiny devices like pacemakers, and
mobile devices like smartphones. That space is currently occupied by wearable technology
like earphones and other internet of things or IOT devices that are rapidly being developed. In
2017 the company acquired Sony's battery division, and since then they've managed to combine Sony's
sophisticated lithium-ion battery technology with laminating techniques they'd already
developed to make their own multi-layered ceramic capacitors. The result is a battery
with a non-combustible and highly heat resistant solid oxide ceramic electrolyte which Murata
claim has a substantially larger capacity than any previously developed technology. The Japanese firm
will establish a production line for the batteries at its Yasu division in Shiga prefecture in Japan
and commence production in the autumn of 2021, starting with relatively small batches and
eventually building to a capacity of a hundred thousand batteries a month. This is a pretty bold
move for Murata. They're sinking a huge amount of upfront capital into the project and will almost
certainly make no profit on the product for some time, but they see it as an essential step forward
to try and stay ahead of the pack in what is rapidly becoming an extremely competitive playing
field, with huge industry players in China, South Korea, the United States and Europe all
desperately trying to gain market supremacy. The real holy grail though, the tantalisingly
elusive mega bucks goal that keeps all major R&D departments furiously working away all over
the world, is of course a truly affordable, mass-produced, solid-state battery for electric
vehicles. If such a thing ever comes to market it'll be so disruptive to the auto industry
that it'll most likely accelerate the demise of internal combustion engines and really kick-start
the revolution of fossil-free global transport. Not difficult to see why it's such an
enticing prize, but putting the corporate head above a well-targeted public parapet has so
far proven to be a dangerous and costly gamble, and not just for Fisker and Dyson either. The US
battery maker Quantumscape has also fallen foul of its own ambition recently. The company has
been widely touted as the most likely contender in the pioneering world of solid
state batteries. In November 2020 the business was floated on the New York stock
exchange to great acclaim. They announced that they created fire resistant test batteries that
were good for 80% capacity even after 1100 cycles. That translates to a 300 mile battery pack with
an operational lifetime of 300,000 miles, or a 500 mile battery pack that's good for half a million
miles. It all sounded absolutely splendid, and the stock price lept up by 256% in just one month.
Bill Gates invested, and the word on the street was that Quantumscape was poised to become one
of the most valuable stocks in the auto industry, even rivalling Tesla. But then an independent
report was published on a crowd-sourced financial information platform called Seeking Alpha.
It suggested that Quantumscape's batteries were actually smaller than an iWatch battery and
had never been tested outside a lab. The report concluded that the batteries were unlikely to
ever achieve the performance the company claimed. That news didn't sit well with investors and
the stock price promptly dropped off a cliff. Despite insisting that the
Seeking Alpha story had no merit, Quantumscape did have to concede that their
batteries are still in the development stage, with results so far coming only from tests
on small prototypes, not full packs. They're now facing a class-action lawsuit from a New
York law firm on behalf of very disgruntled investors who've watched their shares drop 70% in
value in recent months. Toyota have been at the forefront of solid state battery development
ever since that 2011 sulphide breakthrough that I mentioned earlier. They've got over a
thousand patents involving solid-state batteries and right now they're looking like they might
just be the first to market in the EV sector, The Japanese government has been encouraging the
domestic development of solid state batteries as part of a 19 billion dollar state fund designed
to fast-track decarbonisation technologies. Toyota are planning to launch a prototype
solid-state battery-powered electric vehicle before the end of 2021, and a full production
model with a 10-minute charge time and 500 mile range just a couple of years later. The likes
of Nissan, VW and Hyundai are all fairly close behind as well and even behemoths like Ford
and GM are now diving into the technology, partnering with existing battery tech companies
in a desperate attempt to catch up. There's an old cliche, used somewhat cynically about
another potentially world-changing technology, nuclear fusion... they say it's only 30 years
away from reality, and always will be! Let's hope the same satire won't be directed at solid
state batteries, because if someone does actually nail it then the road to global decarbonisation
will suddenly look a lot less long and winding. So what's your view? Do you think solid
state batteries are a realistic prospect or just more media hype from the big automakers?
Why not dive down to the comments section below and let me know your thoughts there. That's it
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Well, is it?
Give another 10 to 65 years. That's the average for battery technology to filter down to consumer goods