On the hunt for a big EV battery breakthrough

Automakers and battery suppliers are in search of a vehicular holy grail — a battery chemistry for electric vehicles that sharply reduces charging times and greatly increases range while remaining cheap and easy to mass produce.

Unprecedented sums of money are being poured into battery research to find such a solution, and battery performance has improved over time as companies tinker with chemistries and packaging. But so far, that breakthrough, one that could push EVs into the mainstream once and for all, is proving elusive.

"We have hit a chemical plateau in terms of lithium battery cathode composition," said Conrad Layson, senior alternative propulsion analyst at AutoForecast Solutions LLC.

As automakers spend billions rolling out EVs and governments boost public adoption of zero-emission vehicles, finding ways to increase battery performance is becoming increasingly important.

Batteries can account for as much as 30 percent of an EV's cost, while EVs overall remain significantly more expensive than gas-powered vehicles. The average transaction price for EVs in the U.S. stood at $65,291 in September, compared with $48,094 for gas-powered vehicles, according to Cox Automotive data.

Batteries are complex, making it difficult to find newer, cheaper solutions quickly, said Alexei Andreev, a co-founder at venture capital firm AutoTech Ventures in Palo Alto, Calif.

"If you have a high school chemistry book, batteries might look like they have just one function," he said. "The ion goes this way, the electron goes that way, and there you have a battery. But it's much more complicated than that."

The biggest hurdle for battery companies looking to innovate the battery cell relates to electrolytes, Andreev said. In a lithium ion battery, charged electrical particles, the ions, flow from the battery's cathode to its anode within the electrolyte — typically a gel or a liquid.

The problem is that all known electrolytes "tend to fall apart at around 4.2 volts," Andreev said.

"If you think about the search for breakthroughs, it will be important to find a high-voltage electrolyte," he said.

That's exactly what companies including BMW, Ford, Daimler, Toyota, Honda and Nissan are doing as they invest heavily into solid-state batteries, which use solid electrolytes and are more energy-dense than today's lithium ion battery.

Solid-state batteries could one day be the major industry breakthrough. They can charge faster and they last longer than today's batteries, they're less prone to catch fire and they can help reduce vehicle weight.

But there are questions about whether battery makers would be able to produce solid-state batteries at scale in the price range that would satisfy automakers and keep prices low enough for consumers. In 2021, the average lithium ion battery pack cost between $147 and $153 per kilowatt-hour, accounting for between 30 percent and 40 percent of the total EV's cost, according to SNE Research.

"You might discover how to do that tomorrow or it might be 10 years from now or it might never happen," Andreev said. "The timeline for discoveries is unpredictable. People are trying, and there's a lot of money being poured into it. But it's very hard."

Other companies are testing the viability of different battery chemistries. Our Next Energy Inc. said in October that it would open a $1.6 billion EV battery cell plant in Michigan by 2024. ONE makes lithium iron phosphate cells and battery packs, which do not contain cobalt or nickel.

"I see our future being derived from iron, which is a very abundant, low-cost material and very safe to operate," ONE CEO Mujeeb Ijaz told Automotive News. While iron is cheaper than cobalt, lithium iron phosphate batteries have generally been shown to have "one of the lowest" energy densities among battery chemistries, Layson said.

"Not all OEMs are on board with LFP, but the German brands are because in densely populated cities, drivers don't often get up beyond 40 miles per hour," Layson said. "That's perfect for an LFP cell. A typical round trip in Paris, Berlin or London might be 35 kilometers in stop-and-go city traffic. Drivers could go all week without charging."

As companies search for the next major development in battery chemistry, changes in battery packaging are yielding promising results, according to Layson.

That's where the real advancements have been coming from," he said.

One of the most high-profile examples of that is Tesla's cylindrical 4680 battery. Its design promises increased range and lower production costs, though the automaker has fallen short of CEO Elon Musk's 2020 goal of building enough batteries for 1 million or more vehicles this year.

Likewise, Chinese manufacturer BYD has developed a "blade" lithium iron phosphate battery, which is less bulky than a traditional lithium iron phosphate battery and can achieve higher energy density due to its design. Toyota is among the automakers that have purchased Blade batteries from BYD, and BYD in June was preparing to sell its batteries to Tesla.

"It's still lithium iron phosphate cathode chemistry, but it's a breakthrough in cell-to-pack technology," Layson said.

Smaller companies are developing new ways of packaging batteries to boost their performance. Battery company Enovix Corp., for example, said earlier this year it has developed a silicon anode, lithium ion battery architecture that data shows can have a calendar life of more than 10 years and can greatly reduce charging times. The California company said in June that its test cells could charge to 80 percent from 0 percent in 5.2 minutes and reach 98 percent capacity in less than 10 minutes.

Enovix has had discussions with automakers about its technology, said Patrick Donnelly, the company's vice president of strategic business development.

"This architecture has some real advantages, not just for batteries with silicon anodes but in general," Donnelly said at a presentation at the Battery Show in suburban Detroit in September.

Even if major advancements in battery cell technology prove elusive, improvements at the margins are making cells perform a bit better every year. Improving performance by just 5 percent each year would lead to large gains over the course of a decade, Andreev said.

If you can maintain it, 5 percent is a powerful thing, he added.