2023-09-07 13:32:58
Batteries that charge much faster are the holy grail for car manufacturers. Not half an hour, but waiting a few minutes before you can drive hundreds of kilometers again. Who doesn’t want that.
Those batteries have held great promise for years. But now they’re on the road anyway. For now only in China. Solid state they are called batteries, so called because they contain no liquid but only solids. Lithium-ion batteries use another liquid. That makes them flammable and sensitive to heat – heat generated by fast charging. So worldwide universities, car and battery manufacturers and dozens if not hundreds of start-ups are working on better batteries. Whoever wins the top prize in this race will not go home with billions, but with trillions.
First for Nio
Over the past twelve months, there have been more and more reports that someone has succeeded in developing the new battery generation. But developing is one thing, mass production at a reasonable cost is quite another. The prediction was therefore that the first cars with these new batteries would not be for sale for about five years.
In the spring, the largest battery manufacturer in the world, CATL – from China, of course – announced that it had a new, fast-charging battery that would hit the road by the end of this year. That seemed too good to be true. But now there’s another Chinese company, automaker Nio, that says it’s already supplying cars with solid state batteries to customers.
At 575 kilos, the new battery of the Nio ES6 is only 20 kilos heavier than the Li-ion battery used in the same car. But the capacity goes from 100 to 150 kWh, and the car can travel more than 900 kilometers with that. That is half more than what was achievable with the li-ion battery. If you wish, you can replace the old battery with a new one in your ES6.
Please half a battery
Personally, I hope that most Nio’s will be sold with half a battery, ie 75 kWh. Because we desperately need the materials for batteries for many more electric cars and 500 kilometers of driving range seems to me to be more than enough for the vast majority of motorists. Moreover, half a battery will also be considerably cheaper.
Nio’s solid state battery should be able to charge a few hundred kilometers of driving range in ten minutes. That is one more reason not to want an unnecessarily large battery in the car. As an extra plus for the climate, the production of the battery produces 39 percent less CO2 rather than making a li-ion battery, says Nio.
Chinese fratricide
Nio buys the batteries from the Chinese company WeLion. With its solid state battery, it puts its competitor CATL to the test. CATL currently supplies one-third of all electric car batteries worldwide. Brands such as Tesla and Volkswagen also use CATL batteries. But CATL doesn’t have a solid state battery yet.
CATL did announce a revolutionary new battery in May that can also be charged very quickly and provides much more driving range. This is an improved version of the LFP battery, which is a variant of the li-ion battery. However, the improvements that CATL has made seem cost-increasing. If all goes well, the new batteries from CATL will hit the road in cars of various brands by the end of this year. Nio only sells its cars with solid state batteries in China for the time being.
What are Europe and the US doing?
It will be interesting to see if Nio and WeLion can really take on the big competitor CATL. But it will be just as exciting to see whether American and European battery manufacturers quickly come up with their own solid state batteries to put a stop to Chinese hegemony.
Vincent Dekker writes about innovations and developments in the field of green energy, close to and far from home. More episodes at Trouw.nl/vincentwilzon. Vincent also has a podcast, including about heat pumps – listen to it via this link or look it up through the known channels.
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