There are some attention-grabbing new cell applied sciences which have come to market in the previous couple of years, and some extra on their approach, which might be price reviewing. Regardless of their vanishingly small market share proper now, they usually entice extra consideration. May they be the following massive factor, or will they simply 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 vitality density (primarily as a result of a considerably larger voltage) and largely comparable different properties to LFP. The reasonably larger projected price of the LMFP is meant to be offset by the rise in vitality, offering a internet profit general. It’s subsequently introduced because the ‘splendid’ improve, however there are nonetheless some challenges to be overcome. Firstly, you’ll be able to’t simply drop in LMFP the place you had LFP earlier than. The upper voltage means you could change your BMS and/or energy electronics or have fewer cells in collection 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. Growing the manganese content material is important to stop a double plateau and acquire the upper voltage, however there are issues it will 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 growing this sort of cell. Sodium has a number of claimed benefits, with the argument most frequently primarily based on price and security, with the primary 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 belief that somebody will sink the billions wanted to scale it as much as the volumes crucial for the assumptions to be true. Nonetheless, from a geo-politics and diversifying provide chains viewpoint, perhaps an alternate provide chain for an alternate 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 necessary USP. There are some massive names backing and growing the know-how, akin to 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 price is unlikely, and there are some elementary 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 barely 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 received’t displace the present contenders for a very long time and can merely enhance the number of choices on supply.
Affecting all these applied sciences, practically each time I hear not less than somebody declare will probably be safer. This demonstrates a elementary misunderstanding of security as an idea. There isn’t a such factor as a ‘protected’ or ‘safer’ cell sort. It’s the job of the engineer to find out how a lot it would price to make the product protected sufficient. For some new cells this can be cheaper to realize, however the engineers received’t understand how to do that with out data, and that requires prototypes, testing, and ultimately area 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 a strategy to pace 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.
