Solid-state cells will cut EV charging time and increase volumetric density

https://electrek.co/2022/04/26/quantumscape-updates-q1-2022-report-includes-new-16-layer-solid-state-cell-and-scaled-manufacturing/

by CarCooler • 4 years ago

326 292 4 years ago

electrek.co

TedShiller• 4 years ago

The main question is not if you can do that, but how many times you can do that

suby• 4 years ago

Quoting the article,

The QuantumScape battery charges at blazing speeds, allowing a 0-80% charge in 15 minutes. It can retain more than 80% of its capacity after 800 cycles, which would represent about 240,000 miles (386,000 km) traveled in an electric car.

sanxiyn9• 4 years ago

Note that it is extremely carefully worded. It retains 80% capacity after 800 cycles, but those cycles are not 15 minutes cycles! I am not making this up, QuantumScape themselves say this. If you check their presentation, 80% capacity after 800 cycles was measured at 1 hour cycles. Of course they don't highlight it, but it's there. Inquiring minds want to know what happens after 800 cycles of 15 minutes.

hulitu3• 4 years ago

Haha, 482 km range. Very credible.

judge2020• 4 years ago

And pretty much every other aspect of the device also matters. Capacity? max power delivery/discharge rate? efficiency?

muglug• 4 years ago

And the most important aspect of all (when cars are involved): safety.

What happens when the car collides with another? Do things go kaboom?

jewel• 4 years ago

A 50 kWh car battery charging to 80% in 15 minutes would be a 160 kW average load. That's going to need high voltage or a thick cable. Is that going to be practical?

Also I wonder what the power connection to a busy all electric refueling station/convenience store by the highway would look like if it wanted to have 16 of these. At least there would be no fumes so it could be more enclosed than a gasoline pump, and presumably no safety reason why you'd need to pay attention to the refueling.

omegalulw• 4 years ago

Certainly on dedicated charging stations?

hooloovoo_zoo• 4 years ago

Current fast chargers already deliver ~300 kW so that itself shouldn’t be a major obstacle.

hesdeadjim• 4 years ago

The newer Tesla superchargers can peak at 300 kW, but to your point I’ve been wondering how on earth the grid will handle one order of magnitude more EVs charging during peak hours.

jay_kyburz• 4 years ago

I bet they will price the power different throughout the day so, just like in my house, power is 3 times more expensive from 7am till 10pm.

Although now that I think about it, There will be a big dip right in the middle of the day when the solar is blasting the grid. Might be cheapest of all at 2pm, and really expensive on cloudy days.

sanxiyn9• 4 years ago

I think one idea is that when charging EV at station becomes problematic, you stop charging EV at home. EV home charging is almost ideally suited to demand response.

If that doesn't work out, you would need to build lots of pumped storage hydro.

octodog• 4 years ago

Depends on when most of the recharging is done. If people are charging at home overnight then we might actually see a smoother load over 24h compared to today, when peak times are during the day to early evening.

Robotbeat2• 4 years ago

Just do what many stations already do. Use a battery to spread the load. LFP is super cheap and perfect for this.

I just don’t think this will be any harder than the advent of air conditioners was. We used to double electricity demand every decade. In a way, it helps the grid by providing a lot more revenue (demand has been largely stagnant, which has really caused the grid to struggle).

adrianN2• 4 years ago

Most cars are parked >20 hours and driven less than 100km a day. Fast charging will likely become something you only do rarely. All we need is a kW or two available at almost every parking spot. Eventually we'll want cars to communicate with the grid to preferentially charge when it's particularly windy or sunny.

elihu8• 4 years ago

We'll just need a lot more grid capacity and power generation. We probably won't be seeing those superchargers installed very often in regular houses, so it's not like the last mile has to support ridiculously high peak loads, but we will need a lot of infrastructure upgrades generally as average electricity consumption goes up.

The transition to EVs won't be instantaneous (cars last a long time), so utilities will have a good long while to adapt to changes in power demand.

I like the idea of electrifying our major highways so that cars can recharge without stopping. One of the benefits of that is that it shifts power usage from overnight charging to daytime charging (when people do most of their driving), which means that electrified roads are more compatible with being able to take advantage of solar power.

natch7• 4 years ago

Asked and answered. Ubiquitous rooftop solar with onsite battery storage. Sure this does not cover all scenarios or latitudes but it covers a majority of the inhabited world so that grids can handle the rest.

FriedPickles• 4 years ago

Voltages are going up! The Lucid Air battery pack is at 900 volts, compared to the Model 3 at 350 volts.

When asked about it on the earnings call, Tesla stated their main reason to not increase voltage is their existing charger network.

hulitu3• 4 years ago

There are also other reasons. High voltage components are expensive. Insulation is expensive. Reliability goes down.

stephen_g• 4 years ago

150 kW DC fast chargers are already pretty common, although not all electric cars can utilise such high current. They negotiate the voltage and current with the car - yes, it's high voltage, it can be up to 950V for Tritium's PKM150. There are already chargers up to 350 kW.

clouddrover8• 4 years ago

Yes, it's practical. They use liquid cooled cabling. Here's a 360 kW CCS charger:

https://insideevs.com/news/583774/abb-installed-first-terra-...

Here's a 400 kW CCS charger:

https://insideevs.com/news/375020/repsol-most-powerful-charg...

https://insideevs.com/news/432883/infineon-coolsic-power-mod...

dylan604• 4 years ago

You know all of those substations where the high power transmissions lines get knocked down to distribution line voltage? Now imagine one of those with cars parked around the perimiter =)

yarg3• 4 years ago

Cool.

Who owns the patents?

(And don't show them to me or tell me what they are, 'cause then it's triple damages.)

threeseed• 4 years ago

Toyota has the most solid state battery patents by far.

But obviously not sure if this company infringes on any of them.

robinsoh• 4 years ago

(And don't show them to me or tell me what they are, 'cause then it's triple damages.)

I'm not sure that's an accurate description of the law. The patent laws authorize a court to increase the damages in patent infringement lawsuits up to three times the amount found or assessed. This is known as the “treble damages” award. A decision to increase damages is discretionary with the court, but is usually exercised only in cases of willful and wanton infringement or bad faith litigation. Fortunately, an increase in damages is inappropriate when an infringer mounts a good faith and substantial challenge to the validity of the patent or the existence of infringement.

Can you show me the case that made you feel the triple damages were unfair?

I kind of feel like you're trying to say X or Y battery patent is not fair or justified. But without specifics, I fear that's far too broad. If someone spent billions on lithium chemistry research, then I'd say they should have the monopoly right to monetize their achievements/discoveries (if any) for a reasonable period. If there's no payoff, then nobody will gamble on it and we'll all be worse off with a stagnant battery industry.

yarg3• 4 years ago

It was flippant (and damned near off-topic), but it stems from my dismissive notion of the very idea of wilful infringement.

What other legitimate form of infringement could there be?

Accidental plagarism certainly exists, but I'd imagine that a fairer punishment there would be either an injunction of sale and distribution, or a fair and reasonable licensing fee.

Not being sued into oblivion for something that at most caused minimal damage.

But beyond that - I imagine rare case - the vast majority of non wilful infringements are the result of the independent derivation of ideas.

And I simply don't see how a patent system can justify prohibiting someone from using their own ideas - regardless of whether or not someone else had them first.

yarg3• 4 years ago

I kind of feel like you're trying to say X or Y battery patent is not fair or justified.

Actually no - I'm more concerned about who owns the patents to the pre-existing technologies that the batteries depend on.

'Commercially Viable' to me means that the technology can be mass produced within acceptable bounds of fault tolerance at a price that will allow the final product to sell at profitable margins.

What it does not say is that the company isn't going to get sued by some patent hoarding snake in the grass.

com2kid2• 4 years ago

I'm not sure that's an accurate description of the law.

When I worked at Microsoft we were explicitly forbidden from looking at any software patents, Just To Be Safe.

Kind of defeated the entire idea of patents being published to help improve innovation. Basically other company's patents were treated like poison that were to be avoided looked at at all cost.

asperous• 4 years ago

Two thoughts:

* First, although they are claiming every aspect of this battery is quite a bit better, the key variable missing is price.

* Interesting that $1 billion investment, partially by Qatar Investment Authority. It seems the oil states may be realizing things are changing. It might also incentive them to get on board with electrification.

aaaaaaaaata• 4 years ago

Money just makes money, there's no tradition, loyalty, etc.

lazyier• 4 years ago

The price is set by the market, not by the manufacturer.

This means that they won't really know the price until they find somebody willing to buy it. Before that it is just guesswork. If it costs more to produce then people are willing to spend then it won't last very long.

Which means "First commercially viable" part of the title is a bit of marketing propaganda wank. It might be or might not be commercially viable. This isn't something that gets to be decided by the manufacturer.

dev_tty01• 4 years ago

Which means "First commercially viable" part of the title is a bit of marketing propaganda wank.

Not necessarily. If they are confident they can build it in volume at a cost equal to or less than existing batteries, then by definition they are justified in calling it commercially viable.

kortilla• 4 years ago

This is incorrect. The manufacturer can set a high price and target a high margin part of the market in exchange for lower demand.

It is not in the best interests of any business outside of a commodities producer to produce at absolute top volume and keep lowering price until demand absorbs it all.

nine_k• 4 years ago

The price is set by the market, and that process may happen to be too low to make the whole enterprise profitable. That's the question.

pjerem• 4 years ago

Oil states are investing in anything that isn’t oil since basically forever. They are very conscious their luck is finite and that they need to transform their huge capital into an income for when the day will come.

That’s why they invest in luxury tourism, sports, new technologies… in fact, they have basically no interest into investing into oil related things. Their interest is that /others/ invest in it.

worldsayshi2• 4 years ago

Another issue is recycle-ability. For the current generation of battery technology there are tested methods for close to complete recycling of the whole battery and plans for scaling it up.

For solid state there's not even a theoretical solution for how to recycle.

worldsayshi2• 4 years ago

I heard this from a battery recycling technician on a podcast. But now when I google it I find suggestions that solid state batteries can be recycled: https://theconversation.com/designing-batteries-for-easier-r....

plaguepilled• 4 years ago

Here's a direct link to the white paper: https://www.quantumscape.com/resources/blog/white-paper-a-de...

cyral• 4 years ago

Here's a better source that isn't some weird blogspam/SEO-scheme website: https://electrek.co/2022/04/26/quantumscape-updates-q1-2022-...

nindalf• 4 years ago

Agree, this was much more readable.

riffraff• 4 years ago

very importantly, this mentions it's a "encouraging proof of concept", the original article made it seem as if this was going to hit the shelves next month.

jillesvangurp6• 4 years ago

I've been following Quantumscape for a while. The reason they come up in conversations about solid state batteries a lot is because they regularly report on where they are as a company and because they are quite a bit further than a proof of concept. That's what they had a few years ago. At this point they are scaling the engineering of increasingly more complex battery samples and testing the hell out of those.

Basically, they've been ramping up sample production for some time and have shipped battery samples to customers like Volkswagen who have independently verified their claims and are a major investor. In the last year they've upped the ambition level in terms of the number of layers in the battery, the number of charging cycles under conditions that would stress any battery, etc. They've been reporting steady progress every few months more or less on the previously announced schedule that they were planning to do so.

Their near future plans involve a small test factory that is due to come online next year with small numbers of vehicles on the road by 2024/2025 time frame. Realistically volume production of this would not kick off until closer to the end of this decade. They've actually done a great job of managing expectations around what they do.

Full disclosure: I bought some stock last year in this company and it dropped about 50% in value since then. So, not great. I'm holding onto the shares because I believe they are actually under valued currently. To me it looks like they have a high chance of getting to the market first with a working product that should deliver impressive safety, energy density, and charging speeds. I don't know of other solid state battery companies that are that close to having a market ready product. They have customers lining up (several major car brands). A healthy amount of liquidity to build factories and do more testing. And there's going to be a market for their batteries if they manage to ship working products. So far, everything I've heard about this company suggests that things are proceeding more or less as planned and that they remain on track to do hit their targets over the next few years. But I may have to wait a few years before that translates into the massive share price increase I'm expecting. It's a gamble and I don't recommend others to gamble. But I feel good about this one.

Sandy Munro interviewed the CEO a few months ago on his Youtube channel. Worth a watch.

Terry_Roll• 4 years ago

I think we will be seeing more of this sort of news, I wondered how some university bods have got on since their last expose in the media with their endeavours because they had solved the fast charging heat problem which turns batteries into plastic explosives. Last I heard they were trying to get the process commercialised in a factory setting.

So I think we will be seeing more of this type of news now, which is good because who doesn't like the acceleration of electric motors in vehicles if the weight can be kept down?

Cthulhu_2• 4 years ago

It's a Problem I see with a lot of blogspam articles - when it comes to battery tech, cures for $disease, discovery of "earth-like" planets, etc - they all make it look like they're about to hit shelves. But more often than not it's only in laboratory conditions, it's extrapolating a "what if" from a scientific paper, commercially unviable, or even straight up grifts trying to sell a patent or trying to get bought out by a big company like Tesla.

I wish I could filter these very hypothetical links from HN somehow. At least the comments will point out the shared links are not the source and will link to better resources.

asdman99• 4 years ago

"as if this was going to hit the shelves next month." I must say that I did not get this impression.

causi• 4 years ago

I've seen a number of toxic/plagiaristic submissions from brighterside show up. Would be nice to add them to the list of spam/blocked domains.

dang• 4 years ago

Changed from https://www.thebrighterside.news/post/first-commercially-via.... Thanks!

maxpert• 4 years ago

Isn’t this the company where some hedge fund published report on and they have a short position? Until there is no 3rd party testing and independent publications verifying their claims I am not buying anything. I know I sound skeptical but I’ve lost enough money on SPACs.

sanxiyn9• 4 years ago

Yes it is. It is on the front page of Scorpion Capital, "activist short selling focused on publicly traded frauds and promotes".

You can download 188 pages report here. Decide for yourself. https://scorpioncapital.com/

ttul• 4 years ago

Reads like an episode of Billions

gaze• 4 years ago

I’m in no position to review the legitimacy of their report on this company, but their review of IonQ’s technology, a field I have a recent PhD in, is pretty bad. They might be right about the SPAC nonsense and the business aspects— I don’t know. However, it’s clear they’re talking out their asses about the technology.

gonesilent• 4 years ago

Audi and VW have been independently testing them.

xyst• 4 years ago

Their track record is pretty terrible.

https://scorpioncapital.com/track-record

Entire port is negative. Not a single short position is turning profit.

bawolff• 4 years ago

If they have a short position doesn't that mean they are financially motivated to see them fail? Doesn't sound like a neutral source.

xiphias2• 4 years ago

Why did you buy the SPACs? Was it because of the charisma of Chamath?

As for me, when Richard Brandson, a brave and crazy man had the idea of making money from space tourism for example, the whole thing just didn’t make sense: if I go to space, I want the spaceship done by an engineer who doesn’t risk his life, but prefers to automate everything first (SpaceX). I like the idea of perfecting rockets using cargo as a business and only _then_ using them for tourism. With that SPAC I got sceptical of all of them.

panick21_11• 4 years ago

Yes. But that was one that was not well done.

A few people involved in the industry called out a lot of things they said in that report.

The stock price was insane, but most of the criticism they made of the tech doesn't hold much water. You can find a good video about the report on youtube. See TheLimitingFactor detailed video on the report.

mrb2• 4 years ago

For comparison, a Tesla Model S Plaid charges to 80% in 30 minutes, on a v3 supercharger. Reference (exactly 78% in 30 minutes): https://insideevs.com/news/544379/tesla-model-s-plaid-superc...

petesergeant2• 4 years ago

Very curious about how much difference that 15m takes, and presumably there are at least some studies. A 15m charge to use the restroom, check Instagram, buy a coffee feels very doable in a way that 30m feels like a drag, and more than twice the effort.

throwawayboise2• 4 years ago

15 minutes still sounds like a very long time to me, compared to fueling a gasoline vehicle (I rarely use the restroom, check Instagram, or buy a coffee, or do anything else when I do this). I'm typically back on the road in under 5 minutes.

nightski• 4 years ago

Agreed but imho it's not just about how long it is for one person. If a significant amount of people start needing to charge we are going to need more throughput at charging stations.

trashtester• 4 years ago

These cars have ranges around 400 miles / 600 km, and EV owners normally charge them at home regularly.

Cold weather or non-economical driving may reduce that a bit, but you are unlikely to need to stop to charge in any given day before driving 200-300 miles (300-450km).

If you plan to go another 200+ miles, a 30 minute break may be welcome at that point. Or if you're caught just 50 miles or so from home, just charging 5-10 mins should let you reach your home charger.

Anyway, for normal commute driving, most people rarely need to charge away from home. These stations are for longer trips, that most people do only a handful of times per month.

tra32• 4 years ago

Yeah but they are also claiming double the energy density. Very impressive if true.

Andys2• 4 years ago

This isn't really a relevant metric though; current EVs have sufficient energy density, its the price and shortages that are causing issues.

clouddrover8• 4 years ago

The Hyundai Ioniq 5 charges 10 to 80% in 18 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCqcqy29ZCc

The Porsche Taycan can do 0 to 80% in 21 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrkAeTWDed4

A charging comparison between the Hyundai Ioniq 5, Audi e-tron GT (same platform as the Taycan), Audi e-tron 55, and a Tesla Model 3 Long Range: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gxcukAhIAU

natch7• 4 years ago

Those non-Tesla speed numbers are only at certain rare chargers.

Remember Volkswagen Group hacking their own emissions tests? Reminds me of that.

Good luck traveling and finding those speeds. It’s more like “oh look we have an existence proof of a handful of fast chargers but none where you are going…” well, OK. I’d rather have a well built out network.

olavgg• 4 years ago

I have a Porsche Taycan, and while it can charge 250kw/h, it only last for a few minutes. On average fast charging from 20% to 80% takes 30-45 minutes. This is with a heated battery and on Ionity network.

tomc19853• 4 years ago

Can it do this consistently without destroying the lifetime of the battery?

kurthr• 4 years ago

Yes, it can easily do this hundreds of times with minimal loss of capacity (e.g. 5%) so long as temperature is well controlled, but depth of discharge is not really 0% (fully discharged) and it's not really 80% (fully charged).

They're made of of many hundreds of cells at different charge points, but likely 10-20% is as discharged as you're likely to get (without leaving the vehicle sitting for weeks on end) and 80% is as charged as you'll get. They have traded power density for lifetime and "charging rate".

themitigating2• 4 years ago

There is a cooling system to manage heat. Also, apparently the real issue for most tesla batteries is going above 90% or below 20% ish

silon42• 4 years ago

Yeah... My priority would be to have a 10-20kwh (for 2-3) days of use battery at home (which needs to do 3000+ cycles) charged via solar and then recharge the car slowly overnight.

tooltalk• 4 years ago

Hyundai/Kia Ioniq 5/EV6 can do 10%-80% in 18 mins now (with sustained peak charging 235kw between 10%-45%). I guess this is a small step forward, but certainly not a breakthrough.

Youden4• 4 years ago

FWIW I own an EV6 and found the more nuanced analysis of its charging at [0] to be much more useful to me than the headline numbers.

[0] https://insideevs.com/news/537223/kia-ev6-prototype-fast-cha...

KennyBlanken3• 4 years ago

For comparison, a Hyundai Ioniq 5 (or Kia EV6) charges from 10% to 80% in eighteen minutes on an 800v capable charger.

Other 800v cars are similarly fast: Audi e-Tron, Porsche Taycan, Lucid. Polestar has announced they're going 800v in 2024. GM's Ultium platform already uses 800v (currently just the Hummer, but expect them to rapidly release more truck and SUV models based on Ultium.)

Tesla has been snoozing for 3+ years on charging tech, and now their 400v architecture is inferior to what Hyundai, Kia, and GM offer. General Motors offers better charging tech than Tesla.

The world's largest automakers are (successfully) gunning for Tesla. Not a good time for Musk to be distracted, fucking around with a social media company...

2rsf• 4 years ago

The only problem, at least here in Sweden, is the lack of fast chargers and the quality of those that exist. Most places have cheap to free 20KW chargers, 50KW are easy to find but 120KW and up requires you to travel a few kilometers or more and possibly stand in a queue.

Add to that the fact that those optimistic numbers are in perfect conditions, a preheated battery and the stars aligning perfectly in the sky that day- I rarely get even close to the advertised numbers.

grahamludwinski• 4 years ago

Hyundai and Kia max out around 230kw, Taycan maxes out around 270kw but can't sustain it for very long, but Lucid is actually able to hit 300kw.

Tesla is maxed out at 250kw for all models (3,Y,S,X) but they are working on increasing charging speeds on their V3 superchargers later this year: rumored to be 325kw. So I would say they are very much competitive with the rest of the industry and their better drive-train efficiency means you still get more added range per minute than all other EVs (except Lucid)

tempestn• 4 years ago

Time to charge to 80% is less important than time to charge to X kWh though. Given the storage to weight ratio of this battery is supposed to be much higher, even if it took the same time to charge to 80%, it would take less time to charge to a given range.

throwaway2902• 4 years ago

You can charge a battery in 15 minutes, but tell me what its lifetime is going to be afterwards…

laserbeam2• 4 years ago

They claim 80% charge after 50 mins. And they claim over 80% capacity after 800 charge cycles and they estimate that at >350000 km.

If true, 80% charge is still ~50% more range than a fully charged ev today.

Now it remains to be seen if all of this is true.

xxs2• 4 years ago

They don't tell anything how fast were those 800 charges. No info on the weight (energy density) or the discharge rate, or if it has exotic materials used. No info on the capacity degradation (it won't be linear), either.

One fishy quote: They also increase unwanted reactions between the ==electrolyte== and the lithium, speeding up battery failure. How is that solid state, or it's just general info

haberman• 4 years ago

Sorry if this is a silly question, but what are the moving parts that make normal lithium ion batteries not solid state?

Phones and laptops don't make any noticeable movement sounds when they charge, but I have noticed that my Tesla will produce some random knocking sounds when supercharging. Are these the kinds of moving parts that solid state batteries would remove?

sanxiyn9• 4 years ago

It's not about moving parts. All current lithium ion batteries use liquid electrolyte.

jxramos• 4 years ago

I'd suspect the knocking sounds are thermal expansion of some rigid parts shifting about.

monocasa• 4 years ago

In this case solid state refers to replacing the electrolyte gel with a solid material. That gel can move out of the way as dendrites grow within the cell causing short circuits between the anode and cathode layers.

panick21_11• 4 years ago

They still have liquid gel. The just have a solid separator and the gel is only on 1 side of the battery.

adgjlsfhk15• 4 years ago

The sound your car makes when charging are temperature control stuff (fans, valves, cooling pumps etc). "solid state" for batteries isn't opposed to moving stuff, but liquid stuff.

trainsarebetter• 4 years ago

For one there’s the HV contactors opening and closing. The have a bit of a “think” to them

olivermarks8• 4 years ago

The big concern with fast charge lithium electricity storage is fire

NFPA: Lithium-Ion Battery Fires in Electric Vehicles - Safety Risks to Emergency Responders

https://youtu.be/J6eS6JzBn0k

As battery tech slowly improves and more batteries are put in service this is going to become an ever more urgent issue.

https://insideevs.com/news/583324/paris-suspends-149-bollore...

andkenneth• 4 years ago

I think the idea is that the state batteries are less prone to fires during charging and can therefore be charged faster. Not sure if that makes any difference if the damage is from impact i.e. car crash.

olivermarks8• 4 years ago

I know it's wildly unpopular to challenge battery safety on Hacker News but I do recommend watching the NFPA video I linked to above.

jillesvangurp6• 4 years ago

The amount of lethal ice car fires is way higher than the amount of battery fires. Both in absolute and relative terms.

Not surprising of course that vehicles carrying large amounts of combustable fluids sometimes combust. Apparently it's one of the most common reasons for calling in fire trucks. People die in ice car fires too. If you genuinely worry about vehicle fires rather than spreading alarmist nonsense, you might want to rethink where you park your ice car. Especially older ones with fuel leaks, cooling problems, etc. More a question of when than if these things start breaking.

The relative safety of batteries to dirty, dangerous, inefficient, etc. ice cars is actually a strong argument for them. How is there no outrage against ice vehicle fires killing people on a regular basis? It happens so often that it isn't even news when it happens.

And of course the point of solid state batteries is none or at least a lot less flammable electrolytes.

sofixa• 4 years ago

An ICE car is a known risk. People know where the fire prone parts are, many carry extinguishers ( small, but still), and fire departments know how to quell such fires.

A Li-Ion fire cannot be stopped once it starts, it has to burn to the end. Recently there was a string of electric bus fires in Paris, and having unstoppable fires with thick black clouds in a dense urban city is not great. Solutions need to be found because it can become a real problem.

heleninboodler• 4 years ago

How is there no outrage against ice vehicle fires killing people on a regular basis?

This ignores the fact that there is a genuinely novel risk with Lithium-Ion batteries, which is that they contain large amounts of "stranded energy" which can trigger new fires. See the linked video above for examples of car fires being extinguished, only to have the car then taken to a tow yard where the battery spontaneously started another fire 5 days later due to the massive amount of energy in a non-discoverable state and the very unstable nature of it. With a gas tank, you at least have a reliable way to drain it, and it's not so volatile as to just spark up by itself. Given the current situation, I wouldn't be surprised to see tow companies that refuse to accept EVs due to the unpredictable nature of them in wrecked form.

olivermarks8• 4 years ago

@jillesvangurp unfortunately your comment is typical of the lack of understanding around fire risk in vehicles. Gasoline vapor burns relatively cool in comparison to a trapped energy runaway thermal battery event. A fully charged battery contains an immense amount of trapped energy which once compromised has to escape. Gasoline doesn't burn unless super heated, while diesel doesn't catch fire at all which is one of the many reasons it is used in commercial vehicles. The NFSA video I linked to goes into BEV realities in some detail.

nicoburns3• 4 years ago

Luckily the other big benefit of solid-state batteries is they don't tend to catch fire (even when physically destructed). The flammable part of lithium-ion batteries is usually the liquid electrolyte, but solid-state batteries don't have a liquid electrolyte.

simmo9000• 4 years ago

"... increase the autonomy of an electric car"

Just by changing battery technology sounds like an impressive feat.

clouddrover8• 4 years ago

Autonomy in this context means range.

Andrew_nenakhov• 4 years ago

This is a marketing fail. Should have claimed, 'charges to 100% in 15 minutes, and can be overcharged to 125% in further 2-3 hours'.

teaearlgraycold3• 4 years ago

Damn researchers being honest.

Gigachad• 4 years ago

Apple actually did this on the iPhones once. It was a PR disaster when someone found out charging past 100% did something.

a_t48• 4 years ago

Source on this?

jtcruthers• 4 years ago

I don't remember ever hearing this, and a quick google search comes up empty. Skeptical about this claim.

8n4vidtmkvmk• 4 years ago

could also say it charges to tesla 3 capacity in under 5 minutes

devoutsalsa• 4 years ago

First commercially viable lithium metal solid state battery charges to 100% in just 15 minutes!*

*using base 9

Al-Khwarizmi• 4 years ago

Actually I'd be fine with that marketing if all claims on battery life and autonomy were based on what they call 100% (i.e., the actual 80%).

rkangel2• 4 years ago

If you do that, it skews all of your figures for "kwh per kg" and "kwh per m3". I'd suggest that those are far more important figures of merit for design of electric aircraft and vehicles.

brandmeyer3• 4 years ago

You may have meant this ironically/sarcastically, but it is entirely true. I'm a very happy owner of a fast-charging EV6. For longevity, slow overnight charging almost always just goes to 80%. I only need about 25% of the pack for my daily commute, and lithium battery degradation is dominated by time at high state-of-charge and temperature.

For road trips, the battery charges up to 80% capacity in about 18 minutes on a fast charger (with some caveats when its cold). Charging rate rapidly falls off with increasing state-of-charge, so you're almost always better off just hitting the road at that point. But since you don't actually discharge all the way down to zero, the fast charge cycle realistically only takes 12-15 minutes. The only times that I've taken it to 100% (125%!) were immediately prior to a road trip segment on the overnight slow charger, or for a quarterly balancing charge.

That's all with today's technology on a commercially available product. So this technology can only offer an incremental decrease in weight and/or increase in range.

elihu8• 4 years ago

By weight, it offers between 380-500 Wh/kg, as compared to 260 Wh/kg in packages currently used by Tesla.

That's pretty huge if the company's claims hold up. That's in the ballpark where doing an EV conversion on an existing ICE car becomes a lot easier because you could theoretically just replace the original gas tank with 100-200 pounds of batteries and have a good-enough range to be useful for short/medium trips. And the car might end up lighter than stock.

I wonder what the material inputs are? Does this battery use cobalt or nickel or anything else that's similarly expensive? Or can these things in theory be made super cheap once the manufacturing scales up?

skykooler• 4 years ago

This would also be amazing for electric aircraft, as capacity to weight ratio is the main thing holding them back.

elihu8• 4 years ago

It would. Liquid fuels would still have an enormous energy storage to weight ratio advantage, but electric aircraft might become good enough to be practically useful.

I'd imagine there could be military applications too, once the energy density is high enough to be useful. If you have, say, a bunch of tanks that can run off of diesel or batteries, then you can recharge them opportunistically whenever power is available (i.e. if you're defending a city that still has functioning utilities) and save the diesel for when you have to move long distances. Basically, it makes the fuel resupply logistics more flexible, and it reduces costs and climate impact in peacetime if exercises are conducted mainly on batteries.

rplnt• 4 years ago

Small two-seaters maybe. Or slightly bigger aircrafts doing short hops (e.g. island hopping). This is still nowhere near close anything that could be used on big commercial planes.

yc-kraln• 4 years ago

This is incorrect, well, partially. The main issue holding back electric aircraft is volumetric efficiency (space), not weight.

BatteryMountain• 4 years ago

Jet fuels for take off (and maybe landing) and electric for sustaining flight once in the air?

FabHK2• 4 years ago

capacity to weight ratio

AKA "specific energy", usually measured in kWh/kg or MJ/kg.

locallost3• 4 years ago

What will just replacing the gas tank with batteries accomplish? The engine still needs gas.

ranguna• 4 years ago

Unless your comment was sarcastic, I think you read in a diagonal. Read the previous comment thoroughly please:

EV conversion on an existing ICE car

EV conversion, meaning the motor would be electric as well...

DeWilde• 4 years ago

And the car might end up lighter than stock.

This sounds like a good idea but changing the cars base weight can affect its security rating (more likely to flip over).

Additional weights would have to be added in the places that it correspond to parts being removed.

waiseristy• 4 years ago

a.k.a it'll handle like garbage. You can also just put the appropriate springs in for the after-swap weight instead of adding a bunch of dead mass that will reduce range

elihu8• 4 years ago

Maybe... depends where weight is added and removed, and how much. Most cars aren't particularly prone to flip in the first place, and a few hundred pounds probably won't make a huge difference. (ICE cars vary in weight depending on whether the gas tank is full or empty, and it's generally not an issue.)

I've heard that having more than 50% of the weight on the rear wheels is dangerous because if you lose traction on a corner it's the rear wheels that would lose their grip first, which is hard to recover from, whereas if the front wheels slip first it's more self-correcting.

nicoburns3• 4 years ago

My understanding is that QuantumScape are far from the only company working on solid-state lithium-ion batteries, and that they are widely expected to be ready for production at some point around 2023-2028. I don't think they're using especially exotic materials. The challenges seem to be in getting the manufacturing process right.

panick21_11• 4 years ago

The cathode is basically just a high nickel cathode like most car batteries. 80% nickel, 10% cobalt, 10% manganese or something along those lines.

The anode is pure lithium metal. The only think you save is graphite.

However of course it is higher density, so less material for the same range.

Or can these things in theory be made super cheap once the manufacturing scales up?

There are some advantages, like they believe they can remove the formation step in manufacturing.

But the production lines are not very mature at all and making them at modern giga-factory scale will face many problems.

The potential price advantage is from the density increase, not materials or manufacturing itself.

---------------

PS: They also have an LFP product, but its the same concept, same cathode, lithium metal anode.

galangalalgol• 4 years ago

The increased density seems like it might create cooling, and hence lifetime issues, is lifetime on solid state batteries well known yet? Also, as a resident of an area that gets very hot, does anyone do a good job at self cooling besides tesla packs? Last I heard the leaf lost capacity very quickly in places like Phoenix.

elihu8• 4 years ago

An LFP version sounds awesome, especially if it has pretty good energy density.

AtlasBarfed3• 4 years ago

LFP will hit 260 wh/kg, with superior cell-to-pack density, no cobalt/nickel/manganese AFAIK. That is the 350-500 mile range cars and anything shorter.

Sodium Ion will hit 160 wh/kg so that's the 200-300 mile city cars, and no need to even source Lithium. And grid storage.

I haven't done the napkin math, but the high-density LFP should also be the 100 mile range PHEV, which would solve the middle america / rural Africa/Siberia/etc range issues.

That Li-S paper that went through HN about a month ago will probably do those densities, so that would supplant SSB, and would probably (speculating here) drop into existing battery factories more seamlessly.

The drop-in conversions would be a huge boon though, I just don't think SSB will get there soon enough.

SSBs would probably still be able to rule mobile/laptops though, still a big market.

We'll see what happens!

megaman821• 4 years ago

Totally agree. There aren't even completed pilot plants for SSBs. There is nearly 0% chance they will be a majority of the market by 2030. LFP batteries are being made today and even small yearly improvements to energy density will be enough nearly all cars by 2030. Sodium Ion is just coming to market and they look great for grid storage. For transportation CATL is proposing hybrid lithium ion and sodium ion packs to solve some energy density and voltage problems with sodium ion alone.

Animats• 4 years ago

"We continue to target delivery of A-sample cells to at least one customer in 2022. The A sample is planned to have dozens of layers and is intended to demonstrate the core functionality of the battery cells." That's moderately encouraging. It's better than the usual "we got this new surface chemistry result, huge revolution real soon now."

As with too many battery articles, this is either a huge deal or total bullshit.

(Electrek should have a monthly column: "1, 5 and 10 years ago in battery press releases.")

jacquesm2• 4 years ago

That column would make for pretty depressing reading.

Reason077• 4 years ago

80% charge in 15 minutes is not far off from some current commercially available EVs using conventional li-ion technology.

For example, the Hyundai Ioniq 5 will charge to 80% in 18 minutes on a 350 kW charger.

albatrosstrophy• 4 years ago

Had no idea current EV batteries have progressed so far. How does this fare with Tesla?

Cthulhu_2• 4 years ago

Who can fill in the "revolutionary battery checklist" comment? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28025930

Villodre• 4 years ago

I chuckled audibly at this xD Saving that comment for later

eterevsky• 4 years ago

How production-ready is that? When will a customer be able to buy their solid-state battery or some product that includes it?

audunw• 4 years ago

First commercially viable lithium solid state battery? There are Mercedes buses with solid state batteries right on the road right now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Om3uVW4lskE&t=11s

Okay, the battery needs to be heated significantly during use, so it's only applicable for larger vehicles. But still, seems to be further ahead in the product development cycle.

panick21_11• 4 years ago

When talking about solid state what they actually mean Lithium metal anode.

Polymore batteries are a different thing.

This is just confusing nameing for historical reasons.

Multicomp• 4 years ago

Yet another revolutionary new battery. Graphene batteries, liquid salt batteries, etc etc.

My dad has a popular mechanics do it yourself encyclopedia from the 1950s and it has several articles of new battery technologies in the works that will be available in a few months, just you wait and see.

For my entire life, new batteries have been just around the corner to replace lithium ion, every 12 to 18 months, one of these articles come out.

At this point, I will believe them when I see them on store shelves and not one second before.

gameswithgo• 4 years ago

Since the 1950s battery energy density has improved by orders of magnitude, it has been happening and is still happening. Hasn’t stopped these incessant cynical takes though.

lostapathy• 4 years ago

You may be a little overly cynical. The first commercial lithium ion battery only went into production in 1991, we actually have made a hell of a lot of progress since the 1950’s.

emteycz• 4 years ago

You must be very young, I remember when mobile phones had Ni-Cd batteries and it was very bad (you could even casually destroy your battery by charging it incorrectly!).

Li-Ion felt like a huge revolution, and the improvements it had since its introduction on the smartphone market are incredible too.

My slim and lightweight pocket supercomputer has a battery comparable to a huge power bank I had 10 years ago. If that's not revolutionary, I don't know what is.

theshrike795• 4 years ago

I just bought a Goal Zero Sherpa 100AC.

It's about the size of a VHS cassette and holds 95Wh (Maximum for airplane travel). This thing could power a dumbphone for months and it's half the size of the ye olde luggable phones.

_fat_santa• 4 years ago

I would say the big difference now is incentive. Lithium Ion batteries are the biggest bottleneck to mass EV adoption. With every car company going Electric, it's a very pertinent problem to solve. You can't really get "Gen2" Electric Vehicles without this tech.

LoveMortuus• 4 years ago

I think one of the biggest hurdles to overcome is actually being able to make produce a product. Because as many many have said before, prototypes are easy, mad production is where the problems lie.

Solid-state cells will cut EV charging time and increase volumetric density

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