Recently, there has been a lot of good news about solid-state batteries.
Following the release of new solid-state battery technology by QuantumScape, a company jointly invested by Volkswagen Group and Bill Gates, according to the Nikkei report, Toyota's currently developing solid-state battery vehicles can have twice the range of traditional lithium-ion batteries under the same conditions, even for the most compact models, there is no need to lay out more batteries and sacrifice internal space.
For a car with a solid-state battery, a full charge takes only about 10 minutes, which is at least two-thirds smaller than traditional electric vehicles, the report said.
Because of its safety, strong cycling performance, high energy density and large scope of application, solid-state batteries are widely expected to be the next generation of power battery technology, and the number of related patents has increased by more than 10 times in the past decade. Whoever can make a breakthrough in technology in advance and achieve mass production will win a better market position. Today, the global competition model of solid-state batteries has begun.
It is understood that the current competition in the solid-state battery market is mainly concentrated in Japan, South Korea, Europe, the United States, China and other regions.
Japan has a relatively early time to develop solid-state batteries. Toyota, the first entrant, cooperated with solid-state battery startup Ilika as early as 2008, and announced a partnership with Panasonic in early 2019. Recently, Toyota said that it hopes to become the world's first manufacturer to mass-produce a car equipped with solid-state batteries, and will launch a prototype next year to start selling it to the market at the beginning of the 2021-2030 decade.
In addition, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Panasonic and other Japanese companies also have a layout in the solid-state battery industry, and Nissan Motor also plans to build its own solid-state battery vehicles, hoping to launch real vehicles before 2028. In line with the R&D trends of automakers, Japanese raw material manufacturers are also speeding up, and Mitsui Metal and Idemitsu Kosan plan to start producing solid electrolytes in 2021.
FujiKeizai, a Japanese market research agency, expects that the world's all-solid-state lithium batteries (all-solid-state batteries; Including sulfides, oxides, polymers, etc.), the market size is expected to expand to 2.6772 trillion yen, a sharp increase of 1,114 times from 2.4 billion yen in 2018.
In order to assist Japanese companies in the development of all-solid-state batteries, the Japanese government plans to soon set up a 2 trillion yen carbon reduction technical assistance fund to provide hundreds of billions of yen in subsidies for the production and research and development of all-solid-state batteries.
In South Korea, as early as November 2018, LG Chem, Samsung SDI and SKI, South Korea's three major battery companies, formed an alliance to jointly develop next-generation battery core technologies including solid-state batteries.
In March this year, Samsung Advanced Research Institute and Samsung Japan Research Center published a paper in Nature Energy that the company's newly developed all-solid-state battery can achieve high energy density of 900Wh/L, long cycle life of more than 1000 cycles, and the battery can drive 800 kilometers after a single charge.
In August, SKI teamed up with 98-year-old Nobel laureate Goodenough and his team's research assistant Hadi Khani to continue developing next-generation battery technology.
On December 1, the spin-off of LG's battery business was completed, and LGEnergySolution (LG Energy Solutions) was officially established. LG Energy Solutions said it will accelerate the development of next-generation battery technologies such as all-solid-state batteries and lithium-sulfur batteries, and formulate strategies to achieve sustainable growth engines.
In Europe and the United States, SolidPower, a battery startup backed by Ford, cooperated with Ford Motor Company in April last year to start developing all-solid-state batteries for the next generation of electric vehicles. In October this year, the first generation of all-solid-state battery (ASSB) prototypes were produced. SolidPower said it will begin testing solid-state batteries for automotive production in early 2022.
QuantumScape, a volkswagen-invested start-up, has released a new solid-state battery technology. The data shows that its battery can be fully charged 80% in 15 minutes, and the normal service life will reach about 12 years on vehicles with a range of 300 miles or more. Simultaneous tests showed that the battery did not deteriorate after 800 cycles, equivalent to a range of 240,000 miles (380,000 kilometers).
Domestically, lithium battery companies such as CATL, Guoxuan Hi-Tech, Ganfeng Lithium, Tianqi Lithium, BYD, NIO, Great Wall Motor, BAIC Group and other car companies have participated in solid-state battery research.
At the end of 2019, Dangsheng Technology said that the company's solid-state lithium battery materials have been sampled to many customers at home and abroad, and the product performance has been widely recognized, and is currently conducting follow-up research and development according to customer feedback and needs.
In July this year, Ganfeng Lithium said on the interactive platform that the first generation of 200 million watt-hours solid-state battery pilot line has been successfully put into production, and the product performance has fully reached the level of samples developed by the company's solid-state battery R&D team.
Also in July, a pure electric prototype equipped with a Qingtao solid-state battery system completed commissioning at BJEV and successfully rolled off the production line. It is reported that the Qingtao first-generation solid-state battery system has begun to have the feasibility of mass production, with a total investment of 5.5 billion yuan and an annual output of 10GWh Yichun Qingtao solid-state power lithium battery project (phase I) has been put into production.
Guoxuan Hi-Tech Xu Xingwu also expressed the company's layout in solid-state batteries in September this year, saying that it will introduce relevant technologies within two years, and begin to iteratively upgrade solid-state battery technology in 2022 to produce high-safety solid-state batteries; After 2025, all-solid-state batteries with an energy density of more than 800Wh/L, more than 400Wh/kg, and 800 cycles will be produced.
However, each country and each company is different in the choice of solid-state battery route.
Solid-state batteries have advantages that traditional batteries cannot match in terms of energy density and quality, and even the battery can maintain more than 90% of the initial performance after more than 30 years of use, which is very expected. According to the forecast of relevant institutions, the global demand for solid-state lithium batteries is expected to reach 1.7GWh, 44.2GWh and 494.9GWh in 2020, 2025 and 2030, respectively, and the global solid-state battery market space is expected to reach more than 150 billion yuan in 2030.
However, solid-state batteries do not currently have the conditions for large-scale industrialization, and it will take a long time to industrialize, after all, power batteries and general consumer batteries have higher requirements for consistency, cycle life and safety after loading.
Although many manufacturers have high expectations for solid-state batteries, Toyota has proposed commercial application in 2022. However, industry insiders believe that the process route of solid-state batteries is not yet mature, and cost reduction is still a long process, or 2025 to fully realize industrialization.
No matter how the solid-state battery industry develops in the future, technology will always move forward, and time will tell the answer!