13 ms·

Lithium ion batteries set the standard because they have an acceptable level of all the key metrics: energy storage by weight; energy storage by volume; dischar

by mabbo 4y ago

Lithium ion batteries set the standard because they have an acceptable level of all the key metrics: energy storage by weight; energy storage by volume; discharge rate; charging rate; production costs. Every single one of these big breakthrough announcements touts how great this new tech is- in just one or two particular metrics. The problem is that Li-Ion batteries are just barely acceptable in all of those metrics. No new battery is going to replace them unless they can match Li-Ion in every metric and beat them in at least one.

Feloevo 4y ago
There is already a car which uses two battery technologies in parallel. This would also allow you to configure or offer cars optimized for the climate they are being used. I personally also see those news more in 'im 5-10 years' we will have something much better than now.
- kungito 4y ago
  Which car? You cannot drop something like this without a source
  - Feloevo 4y ago
    Can't find it on the fly. I read about it a few month back but ev battery and types etc. Shows a lot of other topics. Might have been Tesla when they announced the other cell type.
  - raddan 4y ago
    I’m sure this is not what the poster meant, but in fact most EVs and hybrids use multiple battery technologies in parallel. For example, a Chevy Bolt has a lithium ion battery to power the drivetrain and a conventional lead-acid battery for the accessories. My old Prius had a NiMH battery for the drivetrain and a lead-acid battery for accessories.
    - rbanffy 4y ago
      > For example, a Chevy Bolt has a lithium ion battery to power the drivetrain and a conventional lead-acid battery for the accessories. This seems like an odd choice - unless you already bought a supply of lead-acid batteries for the next 50 years or so. I've read about a car using supercapacitors in the regenerative brakes to capture energy at high current and, then let it trickle back into the main batteries (or drivetrain) at levels that won't damage it.
      - Retric 4y ago
        This is a classic, it isn’t broken don’t fix it situation. Many laptops had both a lithium ion battery and a watch battery used to keep the bios and an internal clock running after the battery died. https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/why-does-my-motherboard-have-a-battery/ https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/why-does-my-motherboard-have-a...
        JohnClark1337 4y ago
        [dead]
        Someone 4y ago
        That was a bit of a necessity. Users wouldn’t want their clock to reset when they swapped batteries, and you couldn’t be sure the machine was connected to a time server to set the time at boot.
      - xxs 4y ago
        The 12v lane is ubiquitous, and standardized. Supercaps are inefficient when it comes to storage per weight and volume, discharge rate too. Both lead acid and supercaps are not even remotely comparable to the main liion battery, they're suppliments, and not interesting ones
        rbanffy 4y ago
        The supercaps aren't for long-term storage - just long enough to allow the extra juice to flow back to the batteries. Racing cars sometimes do that with flywheels. As for 12V, all one needs is a regulator. Unless you have a long-term supply contract (that, I bet, won't be renewed for too long), a lead-acid battery is just dead weight.
uoaei 4y ago
Different battery designs and chemistries are appropriate for different applications. I don't care about how much a battery weighs if it never moves, for example.
- bluGill 4y ago
  True (within limits), but the largest use of batteries is batteries that move. Utility scale power storage is the only significant use of battery that doesn't move. (there are others, but they are not probably large enough to develop a battery for, and so will be stuck with whatever they can get from the other markets)
  - sanderjd 4y ago
    Yes, but stationary energy storage is itself a large use case. There are also different performance profiles within EVs, where different tradeoffs might make sense. Though, like you, I'm somewhat skeptical that any non-lithium chemistries will break through in that space.
- alkonaut 4y ago
  The powerwall use case will only grow when people get solar panels and when rural areas in countries lacking power infrastructure eletrify. But while that use case doesn't care as much about weight, bulk, charge rate and % capacity as car batteries, in return they are very sensitive to cost and the market will (depending on how cheaply recycling can be done) likely be filled with used car-batteries with degraded capacity. If you invent a battery that is 2x as large and heavy as current vehicle batteries but half the cost, then you might think you would be able to sell them for stationary storage, but you are then competing with the price of second hand vehicle batteries which may well be half price already.
  - sorenjan 4y ago
    One drawback of using lots of lithium batteries in your home is that they might experience thermal runaway and burn your house down. Not having to worry about that should have some additional value.
cryptoegorophy 4y ago
As well as battery charge cycles
- infogulch 4y ago
  And shock tolerance, and temperature tolerance, and i/o efficiency
- scythe 4y ago
  Particularly relevant for this particular battery, because the authors seem to think it's impressive that they had 80% capacity retention after 50 cycles. No, I didn't forget a zero. That's 50, not 500 or 5000. It may be an improvement on other Li-metal anodes, but it's still orders of magnitude away from being stable enough for practical use. I'm not sure if the paper is open access or if my library is automatically logging me in again, but the cycling behavior is shown in Figure S18 of the Supporting Information here, page 12: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/downloadSupplement?doi=10.1002%2Fadma.202206762&file=adma202206762-sup-0001-SuppMat.pdf https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/downloadSupplement?do...
DennisP 4y ago
Here are the specs on the Amprius silicon-anode battery, currently shipping in low volume: https://amprius.com/products/ https://amprius.com/products/ That's better on all the metrics you listed except cost, which it doesn't mention. Whatever their current cost is, it should drop significantly once they complete their factory in 2025. https://amprius.com/facility/ https://amprius.com/facility/ Most of the battery is standard lithium-ion, the anode is a drop-in replacement.
- tromp 4y ago
  It mentions lasting for 200-1200 cycles, which (besides a suspiciously large range compared to Li-ion's 500-1000 cycles) is not better on all mentioned metrics.
  - Kye 4y ago
    If it's like Li-Ion, that's full discharge and charge cycles, not every top off. So if these batteries are sufficiently higher capacity, it might make up for the difference. 200+ charges is enough if each charge lasts 2x longer or more.
  - DennisP 4y ago
    The above comment didn't mention cycles but I should have said "similar or better." Cycles are comparable, seems likely it's just more sensitive to poor management. With about twice the capacity, fewer cycles are more tolerable anyway. In any case, this looks like a very practical battery with serious advantages over lithium-ion.
  - ksec 4y ago
    If you have double the energy capacity and the same cycle. Your phone will also last roughly double the time at the same energy usage. That is probably good enough for most things.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  Amprius technology will not magically drop in price as much as people think. Some manufacturing methods don't just scale and become cheap. Their large facility planned is still tiny in terms of battery factories. This will remain an expensive niche product.
phkahler 4y ago
Actually, energy storage by weight is not as big a deal for electric cars. Regenerative braking can recover most of a vehicles kinetic energy, which is where the weight dependent energy goes. This is why several hybrids get better fuel economy in city driving than highway, the biggest losses are due to aero which increases nonlinearly with speed. Otherwise yes, it's important to find something better without sacrificing on any of those metrics.
- subarctic 4y ago
  >Regenerative braking can recover most of a vehicles kinetic energy I used to think that was the case, but then i think i read somewhere that it only recovers 20% of the kinetic energy. Can't find it anymore though
  - magnuspaaske 4y ago
    As with anything else it depends what you optimise for and at the most basic level the car uses the engines to accelerate at all speeds but might need to use break pads at slow speeds.
  - feifan 4y ago
    I've seen data showing ~70% recovery on a Model 3, but I also can't find the source :/
  - hutzlibu 4y ago
    It is basic physic. There is all the time friction of air and the road. You can never recover that. And in rare cases where you actually can recover energy, at non emergency slowing down, it is probably indeed in that ballpark, wich is something(especially in city with stop and go), but not very high or much. With very high tech, you can increase that number a bit, but not worth the effort. Electric cars need good batteries and every improvement there is good.
  - mikeyouse 4y ago
    Like OP mentioned, the efficiency of recovery varies by speed but is generally in the 65%-80% range for total round-trip (the system captures ~80% of the kinetic energy but with round-trip losses, you only get ~80% of that energy to propel the car). Maybe you're thinking of the total range boost provided by regen braking? That's often shown to be roughly 20% via studies; https://sci-hub.se/10.1109/vppc.2011.6043109 https://sci-hub.se/10.1109/vppc.2011.6043109 > Simulations show that the energy reduction of the vehicles under test can be more than 20% by applying regenerative braking. It's an older study, but they show the regen efficiency at 60% for the EcoTruck and 70% for the bus.
Tagbert 4y ago
Lithium ion batteries are not a single technology and are not static. There are periodic changes that improve the batteries in various dimensions. They are constantly evolving. At the same time, it is perfectly feasible for EVs to switch to alternate chemistries a construction methods. Individual vehicles might not switch but a manufacturer could switch their product line to start using sodium or sulphur or whatever new chemistry comes along. This Ars story talks about the ongoing improvements to battery tech… https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/eternally-five-years-away-no-batteries-are-improving-under-your-nose/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/eternally-five-years...
- cptskippy 4y ago
  You're right and so is the OP. Lithium based batteries of varying chemistries collectively in space that few other battery chemistries overlap.
dheera 4y ago
Those are only a few metrics. Li-ion is not fantastic in (a) charging cycles and battery depletion or (b) fire safety. It also depends a lot on use case; for example, for home electricity storage (like a PowerWall) I would gladly give up energy density for safety. If there's some battery tech that can handle 50000 charge cycles and completely non-flammable but weighs 100 tons and has 10% of the energy density of Lithium, I'd gladly make that trade. Maybe build part of the building out of it.
- eknkc 4y ago
  I guess LTO is right there at the moment. Even LiFePo4 batteries are a lot more safer than Li-Ion ones. From what I’ve seen, I would gladly have a LTO pack in my house.
- megaman821 4y ago
  How often will you fully cycle a home battery? At 100 cycles a year it would take 50 years to deplete a 5,000 cycle battery down to 80%. Another 50 years before it was 50%. There is no way the casing would be fully intact and the electronics even be functioning after that long. Current LFP batteries should last multiple decades as a home battery. The already have low flammability. The price is getting more affordable. They could just be part standard of a home electric system in a decade or two, like a whole-home surge protector.
  - dheera 4y ago
    > The already have low flammability. Low rates of spontaneous thermal runaway, sure, but they still are extremely flammable if externally ignited or physically damaged. A house fire that could otherwise be put out might turn into a full disaster. An earthquake that physically damages the battery pack could cause a fire that would have otherwise not happened. A flood or minor tsunami might allow for early evacuations and most lives saved, but now the entire town is on fire instead of just water damaged, if every house has a massive lithium pack in their basement.
brightball 4y ago
The only one that I'm actively monitoring is this one because it handles the other metrics AND gives a path forward to rapid charging, which is the core requirement to displace liquid fuels. IMO any battery advance that doesn't address rapid charging is going to fall to the wayside for exactly the reason you stated. https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltaylor/2021/05/13/ev-range-breakthrough-as-new-aluminum-ion-battery-charges-60-times-faster-than-lithium-ion/?sh=79233bb46d28 https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltaylor/2021/05/13/ev-ran...

by mabbo 4y ago

Feloevo 4y ago

There is already a car which uses two battery technologies in parallel. This would also allow you to configure or offer cars optimized for the climate they are being used. I personally also see those news more in 'im 5-10 years' we will have something much better than now.

kungito 4y ago
Which car? You cannot drop something like this without a source
- Feloevo 4y ago
  Can't find it on the fly. I read about it a few month back but ev battery and types etc. Shows a lot of other topics. Might have been Tesla when they announced the other cell type.
- raddan 4y ago
  I’m sure this is not what the poster meant, but in fact most EVs and hybrids use multiple battery technologies in parallel. For example, a Chevy Bolt has a lithium ion battery to power the drivetrain and a conventional lead-acid battery for the accessories. My old Prius had a NiMH battery for the drivetrain and a lead-acid battery for accessories.
  - rbanffy 4y ago
    > For example, a Chevy Bolt has a lithium ion battery to power the drivetrain and a conventional lead-acid battery for the accessories. This seems like an odd choice - unless you already bought a supply of lead-acid batteries for the next 50 years or so. I've read about a car using supercapacitors in the regenerative brakes to capture energy at high current and, then let it trickle back into the main batteries (or drivetrain) at levels that won't damage it.
    - Retric 4y ago
      This is a classic, it isn’t broken don’t fix it situation. Many laptops had both a lithium ion battery and a watch battery used to keep the bios and an internal clock running after the battery died. https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/why-does-my-motherboard-have-a-battery/ https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/why-does-my-motherboard-have-a...
      - JohnClark1337 4y ago
        [dead]
      - Someone 4y ago
        That was a bit of a necessity. Users wouldn’t want their clock to reset when they swapped batteries, and you couldn’t be sure the machine was connected to a time server to set the time at boot.
    - xxs 4y ago
      The 12v lane is ubiquitous, and standardized. Supercaps are inefficient when it comes to storage per weight and volume, discharge rate too. Both lead acid and supercaps are not even remotely comparable to the main liion battery, they're suppliments, and not interesting ones
      - rbanffy 4y ago
        The supercaps aren't for long-term storage - just long enough to allow the extra juice to flow back to the batteries. Racing cars sometimes do that with flywheels. As for 12V, all one needs is a regulator. Unless you have a long-term supply contract (that, I bet, won't be renewed for too long), a lead-acid battery is just dead weight.

uoaei 4y ago

Different battery designs and chemistries are appropriate for different applications. I don't care about how much a battery weighs if it never moves, for example.

bluGill 4y ago
True (within limits), but the largest use of batteries is batteries that move. Utility scale power storage is the only significant use of battery that doesn't move. (there are others, but they are not probably large enough to develop a battery for, and so will be stuck with whatever they can get from the other markets)
- sanderjd 4y ago
  Yes, but stationary energy storage is itself a large use case. There are also different performance profiles within EVs, where different tradeoffs might make sense. Though, like you, I'm somewhat skeptical that any non-lithium chemistries will break through in that space.
alkonaut 4y ago
The powerwall use case will only grow when people get solar panels and when rural areas in countries lacking power infrastructure eletrify. But while that use case doesn't care as much about weight, bulk, charge rate and % capacity as car batteries, in return they are very sensitive to cost and the market will (depending on how cheaply recycling can be done) likely be filled with used car-batteries with degraded capacity. If you invent a battery that is 2x as large and heavy as current vehicle batteries but half the cost, then you might think you would be able to sell them for stationary storage, but you are then competing with the price of second hand vehicle batteries which may well be half price already.
- sorenjan 4y ago
  One drawback of using lots of lithium batteries in your home is that they might experience thermal runaway and burn your house down. Not having to worry about that should have some additional value.

cryptoegorophy 4y ago

As well as battery charge cycles

infogulch 4y ago
And shock tolerance, and temperature tolerance, and i/o efficiency
scythe 4y ago
Particularly relevant for this particular battery, because the authors seem to think it's impressive that they had 80% capacity retention after 50 cycles. No, I didn't forget a zero. That's 50, not 500 or 5000. It may be an improvement on other Li-metal anodes, but it's still orders of magnitude away from being stable enough for practical use. I'm not sure if the paper is open access or if my library is automatically logging me in again, but the cycling behavior is shown in Figure S18 of the Supporting Information here, page 12: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/downloadSupplement?doi=10.1002%2Fadma.202206762&file=adma202206762-sup-0001-SuppMat.pdf https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/downloadSupplement?do...

DennisP 4y ago

Here are the specs on the Amprius silicon-anode battery, currently shipping in low volume: https://amprius.com/products/ https://amprius.com/products/ That's better on all the metrics you listed except cost, which it doesn't mention. Whatever their current cost is, it should drop significantly once they complete their factory in 2025. https://amprius.com/facility/ https://amprius.com/facility/ Most of the battery is standard lithium-ion, the anode is a drop-in replacement.

tromp 4y ago
It mentions lasting for 200-1200 cycles, which (besides a suspiciously large range compared to Li-ion's 500-1000 cycles) is not better on all mentioned metrics.
- Kye 4y ago
  If it's like Li-Ion, that's full discharge and charge cycles, not every top off. So if these batteries are sufficiently higher capacity, it might make up for the difference. 200+ charges is enough if each charge lasts 2x longer or more.
- DennisP 4y ago
  The above comment didn't mention cycles but I should have said "similar or better." Cycles are comparable, seems likely it's just more sensitive to poor management. With about twice the capacity, fewer cycles are more tolerable anyway. In any case, this looks like a very practical battery with serious advantages over lithium-ion.
- ksec 4y ago
  If you have double the energy capacity and the same cycle. Your phone will also last roughly double the time at the same energy usage. That is probably good enough for most things.
panick21_ 4y ago
Amprius technology will not magically drop in price as much as people think. Some manufacturing methods don't just scale and become cheap. Their large facility planned is still tiny in terms of battery factories. This will remain an expensive niche product.

phkahler 4y ago

Actually, energy storage by weight is not as big a deal for electric cars. Regenerative braking can recover most of a vehicles kinetic energy, which is where the weight dependent energy goes. This is why several hybrids get better fuel economy in city driving than highway, the biggest losses are due to aero which increases nonlinearly with speed. Otherwise yes, it's important to find something better without sacrificing on any of those metrics.

subarctic 4y ago
>Regenerative braking can recover most of a vehicles kinetic energy I used to think that was the case, but then i think i read somewhere that it only recovers 20% of the kinetic energy. Can't find it anymore though
- magnuspaaske 4y ago
  As with anything else it depends what you optimise for and at the most basic level the car uses the engines to accelerate at all speeds but might need to use break pads at slow speeds.
- feifan 4y ago
  I've seen data showing ~70% recovery on a Model 3, but I also can't find the source :/
- hutzlibu 4y ago
  It is basic physic. There is all the time friction of air and the road. You can never recover that. And in rare cases where you actually can recover energy, at non emergency slowing down, it is probably indeed in that ballpark, wich is something(especially in city with stop and go), but not very high or much. With very high tech, you can increase that number a bit, but not worth the effort. Electric cars need good batteries and every improvement there is good.
- mikeyouse 4y ago
  Like OP mentioned, the efficiency of recovery varies by speed but is generally in the 65%-80% range for total round-trip (the system captures ~80% of the kinetic energy but with round-trip losses, you only get ~80% of that energy to propel the car). Maybe you're thinking of the total range boost provided by regen braking? That's often shown to be roughly 20% via studies; https://sci-hub.se/10.1109/vppc.2011.6043109 https://sci-hub.se/10.1109/vppc.2011.6043109 > Simulations show that the energy reduction of the vehicles under test can be more than 20% by applying regenerative braking. It's an older study, but they show the regen efficiency at 60% for the EcoTruck and 70% for the bus.

Tagbert 4y ago

Lithium ion batteries are not a single technology and are not static. There are periodic changes that improve the batteries in various dimensions. They are constantly evolving. At the same time, it is perfectly feasible for EVs to switch to alternate chemistries a construction methods. Individual vehicles might not switch but a manufacturer could switch their product line to start using sodium or sulphur or whatever new chemistry comes along. This Ars story talks about the ongoing improvements to battery tech… https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/eternally-five-years-away-no-batteries-are-improving-under-your-nose/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/eternally-five-years...

cptskippy 4y ago
You're right and so is the OP. Lithium based batteries of varying chemistries collectively in space that few other battery chemistries overlap.

dheera 4y ago

Those are only a few metrics. Li-ion is not fantastic in (a) charging cycles and battery depletion or (b) fire safety. It also depends a lot on use case; for example, for home electricity storage (like a PowerWall) I would gladly give up energy density for safety. If there's some battery tech that can handle 50000 charge cycles and completely non-flammable but weighs 100 tons and has 10% of the energy density of Lithium, I'd gladly make that trade. Maybe build part of the building out of it.

eknkc 4y ago
I guess LTO is right there at the moment. Even LiFePo4 batteries are a lot more safer than Li-Ion ones. From what I’ve seen, I would gladly have a LTO pack in my house.
megaman821 4y ago
How often will you fully cycle a home battery? At 100 cycles a year it would take 50 years to deplete a 5,000 cycle battery down to 80%. Another 50 years before it was 50%. There is no way the casing would be fully intact and the electronics even be functioning after that long. Current LFP batteries should last multiple decades as a home battery. The already have low flammability. The price is getting more affordable. They could just be part standard of a home electric system in a decade or two, like a whole-home surge protector.
- dheera 4y ago
  > The already have low flammability. Low rates of spontaneous thermal runaway, sure, but they still are extremely flammable if externally ignited or physically damaged. A house fire that could otherwise be put out might turn into a full disaster. An earthquake that physically damages the battery pack could cause a fire that would have otherwise not happened. A flood or minor tsunami might allow for early evacuations and most lives saved, but now the entire town is on fire instead of just water damaged, if every house has a massive lithium pack in their basement.

brightball 4y ago

The only one that I'm actively monitoring is this one because it handles the other metrics AND gives a path forward to rapid charging, which is the core requirement to displace liquid fuels. IMO any battery advance that doesn't address rapid charging is going to fall to the wayside for exactly the reason you stated. https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltaylor/2021/05/13/ev-range-breakthrough-as-new-aluminum-ion-battery-charges-60-times-faster-than-lithium-ion/?sh=79233bb46d28 https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltaylor/2021/05/13/ev-ran...