There are some fascinating new cell applied sciences which have come to market in the previous couple of years, and some extra on their means, which might be 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 only be a distinct segment product or doomed to be a historic curiosity?
Within the phosphate world, swap slightly iron for manganese and also you get LMFP with a barely larger power density (primarily as a result 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 power, offering a web profit total. It’s due to this fact offered because the ‘ideally suited’ 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 are usually not zero. The extent of data about how LMFP behaves, can also be decrease. Rising the manganese content material is important to stop a double plateau and acquire the upper voltage, however there are considerations this can result in shorter lifetimes as a result 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 creating the sort of cell. Sodium has a number of claimed benefits, with the argument most frequently primarily based 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 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 essential for the assumptions to be true. Nonetheless, from a geo-politics and diversifying provide chains viewpoint, perhaps another provide chain for another battery expertise does have worth and will justify the funding.
Stable-state is a bit additional away, with no larger power density model being commercialised but, regardless of that being its most essential USP. There are some massive names backing and creating the expertise, reminiscent of Toyota and Quantumscape, and a brand new consortium CASIP in China together with CATL and BYD which is projected to spend virtually a billion {dollars}. Competing with LFP or Sodium on value is unlikely, and there are some basic scientific the reason why energy goes to be exhausting, and security hazards are going to be totally different at greatest 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 barely 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 prevailing 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 basic 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 would 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 data, and that requires prototypes, testing, and ultimately subject information from years of scaling up. It’s this information that offers us the training charges for a brand new expertise, and sadly there is no such thing as a technique 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 expertise is price sufficient to offset the disadvantages of being the guinea pig contributing in the direction of these studying charges.
