There are some fascinating new cell applied sciences which have come to market in the previous couple of years, and some extra on their approach, which can be value reviewing. Regardless of their vanishingly small market share proper now, they typically entice extra consideration. May they be the subsequent huge factor, or will they only be a distinct segment product or doomed to be a historic curiosity?
Within the phosphate world, swap a little bit iron for manganese and also you get LMFP with a barely larger vitality density (primarily on account of a considerably larger voltage) and largely comparable different properties to LFP. The reasonably larger projected value of the LMFP is meant to be offset by the rise in vitality, offering a internet profit total. It’s due to this fact offered because the ‘ultimate’ 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 must change your BMS and/or energy electronics or have fewer cells in sequence which modifications your module design. So, engineering prices to swap aren’t zero. The extent of data about how LMFP behaves, can be decrease. Growing the manganese content material is critical to stop a double plateau and achieve the upper voltage, however there are considerations it will 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 number of others creating the sort of cell. Sodium has a number of claimed benefits, with the argument most frequently based mostly on value and security, with the principle competitors being LFP. The issue for sodium is that the economics look like on a knife edge, if lithium costs are excessive, sodium is value it, and vice versa if not. They’re additionally predicated on the belief that somebody will sink the billions wanted to scale it as much as the volumes essential for the assumptions to be true. Nevertheless, from a geo-politics and diversifying provide chains perspective, 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 larger vitality density model being commercialised but, regardless of that being its most essential USP. There are some huge names backing and creating the know-how, reminiscent of 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 basic scientific the explanation why energy goes to be onerous, and security hazards are going to be totally different at greatest or difficult at worst, leaving vitality density the one wise justification for investing on this new tech. As LFP has taught us, vitality density is just the principle 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 improve the number of choices on supply.
Affecting all these applied sciences, almost each time I hear at the very least somebody declare will probably be safer. This demonstrates a basic misunderstanding of security as an idea. There isn’t any such factor as a ‘protected’ or ‘safer’ cell kind. It’s the job of the engineer to find out how a lot it should value to make the product protected sufficient. For some new cells this can be cheaper to realize, however the engineers gained’t know the way to do that with out data, and that requires prototypes, testing, and finally discipline 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 solution 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 value sufficient to offset the disadvantages of being the guinea pig contributing in direction of these studying charges.
