There are some fascinating new cell applied sciences which have come to market in the previous few years, and some extra on their manner, which can be value reviewing. Regardless of their vanishingly small market share proper now, they usually appeal to extra consideration. Might they be the subsequent huge factor, or will they simply be a distinct segment product or doomed to be a historic curiosity?
Within the phosphate world, swap a bit iron for manganese and also you get LMFP with a barely increased power density (primarily resulting from a considerably increased voltage) and principally related different properties to LFP. The reasonably increased projected price of the LMFP is meant to be offset by the rise in power, offering a web profit general. It’s due to this fact introduced because the ‘ideally suited’ improve, however there are nonetheless some challenges to be overcome. Firstly, you may’t simply drop in LMFP the place you had LFP earlier than. The upper voltage means it’s good to 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 information about how LMFP behaves, can also be decrease. Rising the manganese content material is important to forestall a double plateau and acquire the upper voltage, however there are considerations this may result in shorter lifetimes resulting from 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 such a cell. Sodium has a number of claimed benefits, with the argument most frequently based mostly on price and security, with the primary competitors being LFP. The issue for sodium is that the economics seem 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 idea 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 viewpoint, perhaps another provide chain for another battery know-how does have worth and will justify the funding.
Stable-state is a bit additional away, with no increased power density model being commercialised but, regardless of that being its most necessary 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 price is unlikely, and there are some basic scientific the reason why energy goes to be exhausting, and security hazards are going to be completely different at finest or difficult at worst, leaving power density the one smart justification for investing on this new tech. As LFP has taught us, power density is simply 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 provide.
Affecting all these applied sciences, almost each time I hear no less than somebody declare it will likely be safer. This demonstrates a basic misunderstanding of security as an idea. There is no such thing as a such factor as a ‘protected’ or ‘safer’ cell kind. It’s the job of the engineer to find out how a lot it is going to price to make the product protected sufficient. For some new cells this can be cheaper to attain, however the engineers received’t know the way to do that with out data, and that requires prototypes, testing, and ultimately 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 is no such thing as a strategy 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 the direction of these studying charges.
