There are some fascinating new cell applied sciences which have come to market in the previous few years, and some extra on their approach, which are price reviewing. Regardless of their vanishingly small market share proper now, they typically entice extra consideration. May they be the subsequent massive factor, or will they simply be a distinct segment product or doomed to be a historic curiosity?
Within the phosphate world, swap a bit iron for manganese and also you get LMFP with a barely increased power density (primarily on account of a considerably increased voltage) and largely related different properties to LFP. The reasonably increased projected value of the LMFP is meant to be offset by the rise in power, offering a web profit general. It’s due to this fact offered because the ‘very best’ improve, however there are nonetheless some challenges to be overcome. Firstly, you possibly can’t simply drop in LMFP the place you had LFP earlier than. The upper voltage means you might want to change your BMS and/or energy electronics or have fewer cells in sequence which modifications your module design. So, engineering prices to swap will not be zero. The extent of information about how LMFP behaves, can be decrease. Growing the manganese content material is critical to stop a double plateau and acquire the upper voltage, however there are considerations this can result in shorter lifetimes on account of manganese dissolution.
Sodium-ion batteries are one other. A product has simply been launched by CATL, stealing a march on a bunch of others growing any such cell. Sodium has a number of claimed benefits, with the argument most frequently primarily based on value and security, with the primary competitors being LFP. The issue for sodium is that the economics seem like on a knife edge, if lithium costs are excessive, sodium is price it, and vice versa if not. They’re additionally predicated on the idea that somebody will sink the billions wanted to scale it as much as the volumes obligatory for the assumptions to be true. Nevertheless, from a geo-politics and diversifying provide chains viewpoint, possibly another provide chain for another battery know-how does have worth and will justify the funding.
Strong-state is a bit additional away, with no increased power density model being commercialised but, regardless of that being its most necessary USP. There are some massive names backing and growing the know-how, comparable to Toyota and Quantumscape, and a brand new consortium CASIP in China together with CATL and BYD which is projected to spend nearly a billion {dollars}. Competing with LFP or Sodium on value is unlikely, and there are some elementary scientific the reason why energy goes to be arduous, and security hazards are going to be totally different at finest or difficult at worst, leaving power density the one wise justification for investing on this new tech. As LFP has taught us, power density is simply the primary driver for a portion of the battery market. Subsequently, if any of those new applied sciences does make it and attain quantity manufacturing, I predict they gained’t displace the present contenders for a very long time and can merely enhance the number of choices on provide.
Affecting all these applied sciences, practically each time I hear at the very least somebody declare it is going to be safer. This demonstrates a elementary misunderstanding of security as an idea. There is no such thing as a such factor as a ‘secure’ or ‘safer’ cell kind. It’s the job of the engineer to find out how a lot it’s going to value to make the product secure sufficient. For some new cells this can be cheaper to realize, however the engineers gained’t understand how to do that with out information, and that requires prototypes, testing, and finally subject information from years of scaling up. It’s this information that offers us the training charges for a brand new know-how, and sadly there isn’t any method to velocity this up with out shed a great deal of money. Subsequently, early adopters should usually be in a distinct segment the place the USP of the brand new know-how is price sufficient to offset the disadvantages of being the guinea pig contributing in direction of these studying charges.
