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[Richard230]

An article in my newspaper today, written by Ed Booth and published by the Chico Enterprise-Record reports that researchers and students at Chico State college have partnered with San Jose State and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have received a three-year $2.25 million grant from the DOE and the Office of Basic Energy Services. They will be researching lithium-sulfur batteries in an attempt to improve their performance and to reduce the cost of manufacturing. They are starting out with a watch-size battery and hope to scale up from there.

What caught my attention was this statement in the article by one of the researchers: "The time to market hasn't changed that much over the decades. With lithium-sulfur batteries, we expect about 10 years to have some come on the market. Historically, it has taken 20 years to move something from advanced research to manufacture."  "That length of time hasn't moved that much. Nothing ever goes from small scale to large scale completely smoothly." (No kidding.    )

[Fran K]

The last half page of the 5 page article just about says it is make work for ,underrepresented groups ,increasing the ranks of groups not historically represented in electrical engineering and chemistry is also an objective. And another clip I could have added.

Says dime in diameter size If it says watch battery somewhere else I missed it.  At first it seems to be more for stationary storage of solar energy then later on brings in vehicles.

[Specter]

There are many other techs out there now that they are working on that are far superior than the lithium technology.  10 years, we'll be light years ahead of that battery by then.  A dime size battery is not much good, even if stacked, what's the internal impedance, can you draw the amps thru them that you'd need for motor apps?

The funny thing is though, we are hearing about all this 'new tech', have been hearing for years.  Fluid Batteries,  Sodium Tech, which would theoretically be next up the chain, potentially followed by potassium tech... then there are the carbon super and ultra caps that are just as good as batteries, without all the chemical issues, but so far, not really seen any real prototypes or working models, it's been mostly vapor tech to this point.

Currently everyone is all up about weight, it's heavy.  Well, what if there was a chemistry that maybe was not quite as good power density wise, BUT was 10 percent of the price of Lithium?   Would people be willing to trade out a car that can go 300 miles in theory for 75k for one that could go 250 miles but cost 25k?

Right now batteries are a crux to the electrification process.  Storage is the weakest link right now, if they could get massive storage, then solar might be a bit more viable, because it'd be reasonably priced to store the energy made during the day, or windy days for wind, etc etfc.

Also, imagine every house has a 100 KW battery in it, now to charge ones car up, you would not have to redo the entire infrastructure to be able to handle the doubling of the electrical load on the grid, you could slow charge it all day, then use it at night to charge your car, or run your house in an emergency when power is out.

I think supercaps are going to be the next big thing.  From what I have seen and they ARE on the market now, they can handle a lot of current, are about the same price as the upper end batteries, actually cheaper, and are good for a million cycles, plus can charge pretty fast if you can get the current to them.  I think a catastrophic failure on one of th em will just be a big bang as it shorts and blows itself apart, .vs. a hydrogen and toxic chemical fire that lith batteries will cause.

Or we could get into WWIII blow ourselves up and be back to horse and buggy to get around for those left

Aaron

[Richard230]

I thought I read an article in my newspaper earlier this year that GM planned to introduce new, more stable and less expensive batteries for powering their next generation of EVs. Not only would they be cheaper, but they would also be less power-dense than their current batteries. I don' think the article mentioned the chemistry, but it sounded like they would be going back to your basic LiFePo4 to me.

[flynnstig82r]

When I started following EV’s and battery tech in the late 2000’s, I was convinced that Li-Ion replacements like Zinc-Air with fantastic capabilities were right around the corner, but we don’t seem much closer now than 15 years ago.

To replace an established tech like Li-Ion, a lot of unforeseeable things have to go right to transition from a tech that works in a lab to something you can build at scale for a competitive price with a good safety profile, and then it has to be so much better than Li-Ion that it’s economical to replace an entire world’s supply chain. Even then, it’s a moving target. If it takes 15 years to make all those things happen, and Li-Ion has massively increased energy density and lowered costs in that time, now it’s no longer enough of a improvement to be financially viable.

The theoretical limit for Li-Ion’s power density is still about 10x our current cells IIRC, so there’s a lot of advancement to look forward to, even if there’s no breakthrough replacement technology in the coming decades. And replacements can take a long time to fully take over. Li-Ion batteries were invented in the 70’s and manufactured at scale in the 90’s, but it still took until the late 2000’s before they replaced Ni-MH batteries in high-density applications like vehicles and high-end portable electronics.

I’m as hopeful about solid state lithium and other upcoming batteries as the next person, but replacement battery tech has been a long cycle of waiting for exciting developments that never seem to pan out.