There are some attention-grabbing new cell applied sciences which have come to market in the previous few years, and some extra on their manner, which are value reviewing. Regardless of their vanishingly small market share proper now, they usually appeal to extra consideration. May they be the subsequent large factor, or will they only 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 larger power density (primarily as a consequence 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 power, offering a web profit total. It’s due to this fact introduced because the ‘ideally suited’ improve, however there are nonetheless some challenges to be overcome. Firstly, you possibly can’t simply drop in LMFP the place you had LFP earlier than. The upper voltage means you’ll want to change your BMS and/or energy electronics or have fewer cells in collection which adjustments your module design. So, engineering prices to swap should not zero. The extent of information about how LMFP behaves, can also be decrease. Rising the manganese content material is important to stop a double plateau and acquire the upper voltage, however there are issues this can result in shorter lifetimes as a consequence of manganese dissolution.
Sodium-ion batteries are one other. A product has simply been launched by CATL, stealing a march on a number 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 principle competitors being LFP. The issue for sodium is that the economics look 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 perspective, 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 larger power density model being commercialised but, regardless of that being its most vital USP. There are some large 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 basic scientific the explanation why energy goes to be exhausting, and security hazards are going to be totally 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 just the principle 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 prevailing contenders for a very long time and can merely enhance the number of choices on provide.
Affecting all these applied sciences, practically each time I hear a minimum of somebody declare it is going to be safer. This demonstrates a basic misunderstanding of security as an idea. There isn’t 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 finally area knowledge from years of scaling up. It’s this knowledge that offers us the training charges for a brand new know-how, and sadly there isn’t any 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 value sufficient to offset the disadvantages of being the guinea pig contributing in direction of these studying charges.
