TDK claims insane energy density in solid state battery breakthrough

Apple supplier says new tech has 100 times the capacity of its current batteries.

See full article...

 

[Stuart Frasier]

I would also add, that while ICE engines are about %30 efficient for motion, they also give 'free' heat using a few percentage of the wasted 70% heat, so on cold days when you are running the heat anyhow, technically the efficiency might end up being more like 35-40% (depending on how cold it it/how high you are running the heater) overall, because heating the cabin and windows, melting ice, etc is making use of that energy.

30% might be achievable under ideal conditions, but gasoline motors generally only reach peak efficiency at one speed and load. In practice, it's going to be a lot less efficient than that.

 

[jdietz]

You misunderstood. Competing batteries are producing 50 Wh/l. The article doesn't say what TDK's best are.

500 Wh/L for Li-ion according to Wikipedia. I'm not saying you're wrong, and I don't know how to do my own research. It's a still a big increase if 1kWh/L is the truth.

 

[Yep It's Me]

For reference, gasoline has about 9,000 Wh/l.

Which is an utterly useless comparison given the technology is intended to be used in small batteries for electronics.

I respectfully disagree, for these reasons, that it's "utterly useless".

• The article itself brings in the topic of vehicle batteries.
• A fair number of comments are discussing vehicles, despite the use case for the reported break-through being small electronics.
• A comparison of energy density values in a standardized measurement, regardless of use case, is an interesting and useful fact in its own right.

 

[samanime]

As with all new battery tech: I'll believe it when I see it.

This does sound a bit more promising then most, since it is from someone who is currently producing batteries, and they've made enough caveats to basically say it'll only work for small batteries like for phones, but still. There are multiple "society-changing breakthroughs" announced annually, but we've not really seen any of those make it into the "real world" yet, so call me skeptical.

 

[J.C. Helios]

Do I believe them? Yes. But I also believe there are negative tradeoffs they are not mentioning. There are so many battery performance factors to balance to make a worthwhile commercial battery, and almost any time somebody claims a huge jump in a single one, they are decreasing other important ones.

Honestly, every article about new battery tech should be required to come with a spider graph like this one:

 

[Deleted member 195850]

It's also extremely difficult to recharge.

The process of taking dead dinosaur juice from caverns under the sea, getting it on shore, processing it, delivering it to a readybuilt distribution point for consumers to fill up their cars has been happening for so long, that nobody really thinks about the complexity of it.

Granted, waiting for more dinosaur juice to fill up the cavern under the sea, to be extracted and refined and transported... will definetely take longer than plugging in and charging in an EV.

 

[Trondal]

I was in a delightful discussion at a pub, about how everything is cyclic. And while the curious was asking how so, I said, "well, we had electric cars at the turn of the century, but the failure of acceptance was the battery or lack of reliable technology and chemistry. And then the combustion engine with cheap fuel and monopoly of car maker, tire maker and gas company would end any further pursuit. "

I don’t understand.

You’re saying there was a conspiracy to stop further research into electric cars in the early 20th century?

Not sure why tire companies would care. ICE or BEV, they both need tires.

Sure corporations could more easily conspire back then but I honestly think electric was a dead end for practical and economic reasons.

Not saying we wouldn’t be further along now had this been a major effort but few companies commit long term dollars to the kind of basic research that was needed to move beyond lead acid batteries, such that EVs could be a practical product.

And even now we haven’t solved the chicken/egg problem of charging infrastructure (though it’s clearly improving). Once gasoline infrastructure was in place it became exponentially less likely that BEVs made sense as a product.

And don’t forget that electrical infrastructure was not nearly as ubiquitous outside of urban areas as it is today.

Agree that as a species, we should have started working on this a long time ago, but the reasons we didn’t weren’t conspiracy related.

PS: yes, big oil did work to discredit climate change research but this is not a conspiracy with other industries or them somehow telling the car companies what they can or can’t do.

 

[entropy_wins]

Good point!
And just to clarify, I did not mean to say these advances are hopeless, just pointing out what competition battery tech is up against. Or, from a more positive perspective, what kind of energy density is possible. Taking efficiency into account like you did, I guess we are getting there.

Of the 4 cycles (a) air fuel mixture in, (b) air fuel mixture compress, (c) combustion, (d) exhaust, only (c) gives any motive energy output (Force x distance = J). The distance is set by the compression ratio ( e.g Prius 14:1).

Diesel has a higher compression ratio, as it cannot be spark initiated, and can use more fuel per cycle (since combustion is not spark initiated).

The physics of how you get motive force out of your fuel is greatly improved using electrons...;-)

 

[Dooderoo]

For reference, gasoline has about 9,000 Wh/l.

With 3000Wh/l usable via internal combustion engines ;-)

 

[rosen380]

Reducing the weight has the benefit of lowering the harmful impact in a crash. I'd much rather be hit by a vehicle in the 3,000-4,000-lb range than one in the 6,000-9,000 lb range. (of course, I'd rather not be hit at all) All other safety factors being equal, lowering the weight can help the physics in a crash.

While I agree that I'd rather be hit by a 3-4k pound object than one that is 6-9k pounds, if I had to choose between just those two options, that does feel a bit apples-to-oranges.

A Model3 comes in at around 3,900 pounds while a similarly sized Honda Civic sedan is like 2,950 pounds.

IMO, the extra ~1,000 pounds is more than enough to cast some shade on the weight of the EV batteries, no need to make it sound like it is 2,000-6,000 pounds extra.

 

[allears]

For reference, gasoline has about 9,000 Wh/l.

Yes, but gasoline isn't rechargeable.

 

[mdrejhon]

For reference, gasoline has about 9,000 Wh/l.

Still, it's quite impressive to see a battery possibly get less than one order of magnitude away from this!
I still remember we were more than two orders of magnitudes from this target, given how slow battery improvements are.

The heat loss / efficiency losses from exploding gasoline and turning that into spinny motion, compares reasonably well with the efficiencies of an electric motor.

But can you easily un-explode gasoline about 1000-10,000 cycles (20%-80% SOC) from the comfort of your power outlet in your garage?

Mind you, what excites me more is clean aeronautical applications. Electric near-jet-speed airplanes carrying 50-100+ people on regional routes is made possible by the kilowatt-per-liter battery, especially if it can be made safe.

Even with the extra ruggedization reducing it to ~500 kwh/liter including crash resistant package weight. There's actually less G-force spike involved in a rough landing (one to the limits of landing gear shock absorbers), than an airbag-initiating 20mph car crash, or a dropped smartphone to ceramic tile floor.

The G-forces involved are also typically single-digit G's (even in food-cart-throwing turbulence) rather than sudden 10G-50G spikes. There's a lot of fragile stuff inside an airplane so a lot of metaphorical bubblewrap engineering goes on internally, and electronic G-invalidation sensors can be installed in quick-exchange battery modules, if necessary to trigger mandatory battery swaps. Battery fragility is a (relatively) more solvable problem when it comes to aeronautical applications -- as long as it does not lead to uncontrolled battery combustibility (more problematic). The question is what the battery fragility behaviours results in (e.g. reduced power output is more manageable, with reserve mechanisms, than a battery fire)

EasyJet had a conceptual design that would be made possible with this type of battery tech.

 

[Gomez Addams]

Most of the energy loss in an EV is air drag, which depends on size but not weight. Making the car lighter reduces the energy needed to accelerate but also reduces the energy recovered by the regen braking proportionally so the gains aren't so large like they are with ICE vehicles where all the extra weight is directly wasting energy.

If you want longer range what you need is cheaper batteries. That or to be more wealthy so you can buy a bigger battery pack. But ideally cheaper, even if they don't get lighter.

One potentially big savings from less weight in electric cars will be better tire longevity. Current EV burn through tires very fast. My nephew has a Rivian truck and his last set of P-Zeros lasted 20K miles. My friends with Teslas say it's about the same for them.

 

[kinpin]

The first paragraph is quite confusing , as a visual person a graph may came in handy .

 

[McTurkey]

I’m confused how 1,000 is a hundred times more than 50.

It's 100x more than their currently in-production battery. TDK's competitors have fielded(?) the 50wh/l batteries. I had to re-read that paragraph a couple times before grokking the difference, though.

As an aside to the editors: I object to the use of "insane" in the headline. "100x" was right fucking there, and would've been more attention grabbing while avoiding the somewhat offensive nature of that term.

 

[David Crowell]

How do you source your artisanal electricity that isn't dead-dinosaur powered?

Hand-cranked by orphans is about as artisanal as it gets.

 

[Mechjaz]

2.5x.

20x. And the 50 is their competitors. Their own old tech is 10, apparently.

2020 was when their old tech came out.

in OP's defense, this overloaded it tripped me up for a moment:

which is about 100 times greater than TDK’s current battery in mass production. Since TDK introduced it in 2020, competitors have moved forward,

It was written as if the the breakthrough - the prevailing it of the article - came out in 2020, until you realize the it in this instance is referring to the old tech.

Funnily enough, that was my tip to scroll up and confirm, yep, FT cross post.

Edit: well, that and "insane" in the headline

 

[yippiekayakotherbuckets]

“Industry experts believe the most significant use case for solid-state batteries could be in electric cars by enabling greater driving range.”

industry experts are clowns. The goal is to make vehicles lighter. Today, batteries add a lot of weight to the car to get to 400miles range. If you could reduce that weight by 50 or 75% you’ll have improved vehicle performance. Most gas cars have a range of 400 miles, so EVs at 400-450 miles is plenty - weight is the big issue today.

EVs are indisputably the way we need to go, however, in a big and diverse country like the US, 400-450 miles is plenty of range for ICE vehicles because fueling stations are ubiquitous and reliable. That's not the case for charging infrastructure yet, so vastly increasing the range with new battery tech would be a game-changer for people who are challenged by the current state of charging infrastructure, whether because of geography, or people living in high-density housing where charging at home isn't feasible. This becomes less of an issue if a vehicle could go 900 miles between charges, for example.

 

[McTurkey]

Sure, but that’s not the direction the research is going. They aren’t trying to get the cheapest possible battery, they’re trying to get the densest, which allows use in a number of applications where cost is somewhat secondary.

Er, they are trying to get the cheapest usable wh/$ possible. Density is one part of that, because it enables more use cases, which means higher demand and therefore higher production volume and thus lower production costs.

 

[Ushio]

I’m confused how 1,000 is a hundred times more than 50.

The hundred times is more than their best current product while the 50 is what their competitors are selling.

'competitors have moved forward, developing small solid-state batteries that offer 50 Wh/l'

 

[UrahO]

This article is very confusing and misleading. Let’s look at the following approximated energy density numbers for various battery types:

• Lead Acid Batteries: 50-100 Wh/L
• Nickel-Cadmium (Ni-Cd): 100-150 Wh/L
• Nickel-Metal Hydride (Ni-MH): 140-300 Wh/L
• Lithium Polymer (Li-Poly): 250-300 Wh/L
• Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePO₄): 200-300 Wh/L
• Lithium Cobalt Oxide (LiCoO₂): 250-300 Wh/L (most common in smartphones)

Given these numbers, the claim that TDK’s new battery is “about 100 times greater” in energy density compared to their current battery suggests an implausibly low starting point. If their current battery truly had an energy density of only 10 Wh/L, it would be far below the typical range for any commercially viable battery technology, even those used in niche applications.

For context, even the lower-performing lead-acid batteries, which are among the oldest and least energy-dense rechargeable batteries, have energy densities well above 10 Wh/L. This discrepancy indicates either an error in the claim or that TDK is referring to a very specific, low-density type of battery that is not representative of the broader market.

Furthermore, achieving 1,000 Wh/L would be a groundbreaking advancement, far surpassing the energy densities of current lithium-ion batteries, which are generally around 250-300 Wh/L for the types used in consumer electronics. This level of improvement would revolutionize the industry, but it also requires a careful examination of the specific technologies and use cases involved.

In summary, the article’s claims need to be clarified and contextualized to avoid misleading readers about the current state and potential advancements in battery technology. The numbers presented in the article should be compared with typical energy densities to provide a more accurate and understandable perspective.

 

[Ushio]

If you're referring to this:



You misunderstood. Competing batteries are producing 50 Wh/l. The article doesn't say what TDK's best are.

Well it does it's 100 times less than 1000 Wh/l.

 

[MechR]

Honestly, every article about new battery tech should be required to come with a spider graph like this one:

View attachment 83336

Neat. Although it bugs me how NCA is missing a side to close its polygon.

 

[SomeHandleThatStartsWithS]

It's certainly not 100x the at least 700Wh/l you get from a bog-standard 18650 or 2170 cells, not to mention special high-density polymer cells used in phones and watches. What the have in effect announced is that their previous solid-state efforts were so atrocious that they managed to improve it by 100x to barely matching cheap mass-produced cells when carefully assembled in a laboratory without any other performance specifications.

That's still a ~30% increase in energy density, which equates to either more range for the same volume of battery or the same range with a significant decrease in the mass of the battery. Even reducing the volume and mass of the battery, keeping the same capacity means an increase in range.

 

[issor]

This article is very confusing and misleading. Let’s look at the following approximated energy density numbers for various battery types:

• Lead Acid Batteries: 50-100 Wh/L
• Nickel-Cadmium (Ni-Cd): 100-150 Wh/L
• Nickel-Metal Hydride (Ni-MH): 140-300 Wh/L
• Lithium Polymer (Li-Poly): 250-300 Wh/L
• Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePO₄): 200-300 Wh/L
• Lithium Cobalt Oxide (LiCoO₂): 250-300 Wh/L (most common in smartphones)

Given these numbers, the claim that TDK’s new battery is “about 100 times greater” in energy density compared to their current battery suggests an implausibly low starting point. If their current battery truly had an energy density of only 10 Wh/L, it would be far below the typical range for any commercially viable battery technology, even those used in niche applications.

For context, even the lower-performing lead-acid batteries, which are among the oldest and least energy-dense rechargeable batteries, have energy densities well above 10 Wh/L. This discrepancy indicates either an error in the claim or that TDK is referring to a very specific, low-density type of battery that is not representative of the broader market.

Furthermore, achieving 1,000 Wh/L would be a groundbreaking advancement, far surpassing the energy densities of current lithium-ion batteries, which are generally around 250-300 Wh/L for the types used in consumer electronics. This level of improvement would revolutionize the industry, but it also requires a careful examination of the specific technologies and use cases involved.

In summary, the article’s claims need to be clarified and contextualized to avoid misleading readers about the current state and potential advancements in battery technology. The numbers presented in the article should be compared with typical energy densities to provide a more accurate and understandable perspective.

solid state battery. Sounds like solid states are really only used in nice applications today, but this density could make it feasible as an alternative to some of the existing battery tech you mention, meeting or exceeding those.

 

[littlestviking]

They're worried about the structural stability of the ceramic. So if you hit a molar-rattling pothole, you'll also break the ceramics in the battery. Could also be a problem for things like dropped cell phones, but cars are generally subject to a lot more bouncing around.

True, but it seems like it'd be easier to protect smaller pieces of ceramic, or at least isolate them from shocks. For example, I'd think that 144 1-inch discs embedded in a flexible sheet with tiny gaps between them would be easier to protect than a single foot-diameter ceramic disc, as more of the deformation could be handled by the supporting flexible material, but I'm not sure how accurate that actually is.

 

[skurtov]

I'll believe it when I see it. Every battery article until now has been vaporware. The only interesting technology that's been commercialized so far is the Natron facility in Michigan building sodium ion cells.

 

[ERIFNOMI]

Honestly, every article about new battery tech should be required to come with a spider graph like this one:

View attachment 83336

There's no edge for NCA between Cost and Specific Energy. That's driving me insane.

 

[OrvGull]

One potentially big savings from less weight in electric cars will be better tire longevity. Current EV burn through tires very fast. My nephew has a Rivian truck and his last set of P-Zeros lasted 20K miles. My friends with Teslas say it's about the same for them.

That's because P-Zeros are performance tires and use a soft, grippy compound.

If you put on the type of tires that, say, an F-350 uses, you'd see longer life, but then they wouldn't be able to claim those impressive 0-60 numbers that EVs are marketed on.

 

[Edgar Allan Esquire]

This article is very confusing and misleading. Let’s look at the following approximated energy density numbers for various battery types:

• Lead Acid Batteries: 50-100 Wh/L
• Nickel-Cadmium (Ni-Cd): 100-150 Wh/L
• Nickel-Metal Hydride (Ni-MH): 140-300 Wh/L
• Lithium Polymer (Li-Poly): 250-300 Wh/L
• Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePO₄): 200-300 Wh/L
• Lithium Cobalt Oxide (LiCoO₂): 250-300 Wh/L (most common in smartphones)

Given these numbers, the claim that TDK’s new battery is “about 100 times greater” in energy density compared to their current battery suggests an implausibly low starting point. If their current battery truly had an energy density of only 10 Wh/L, it would be far below the typical range for any commercially viable battery technology, even those used in niche applications.

For context, even the lower-performing lead-acid batteries, which are among the oldest and least energy-dense rechargeable batteries, have energy densities well above 10 Wh/L. This discrepancy indicates either an error in the claim or that TDK is referring to a very specific, low-density type of battery that is not representative of the broader market.

Furthermore, achieving 1,000 Wh/L would be a groundbreaking advancement, far surpassing the energy densities of current lithium-ion batteries, which are generally around 250-300 Wh/L for the types used in consumer electronics. This level of improvement would revolutionize the industry, but it also requires a careful examination of the specific technologies and use cases involved.

In summary, the article’s claims need to be clarified and contextualized to avoid misleading readers about the current state and potential advancements in battery technology. The numbers presented in the article should be compared with typical energy densities to provide a more accurate and understandable perspective.

It would have been nice to see more comparative numbers for perspective, I did some quick math based on the stated capacity and dimensions for the first batteries to pop up on their website which came in at 10.3 Wh/L. A cursory glace seems to be their focus on sealed, small, stable batteries that can last a lot of cycles. Specifically, wearables, sensors, and "energy harvesting."

 

[McTurkey]

Will this lead to an Apple Watch with >7 days operation between charges, or will Apple make the cell and watch smaller or use the space savings for other features?

My singular gripe (and it's a common one) with the Watch Ultra 2 is the size and weight, but I love the battery life. I'm pretty sure if they could pack all those features into something with the thickness of the regular Watch, they would do so. Or maybe I just lack the imagination to think of what else they could pack into something of that size without some major breakthroughs.

 

[forkspoon]

It will let them make the watch thinner.

Or a combination of thinner + longer battery life. It would be a huge selling point to last substantially longer between charges, and going from ~1/day to ~1.5/day (let’s say) wouldn’t help a watch much in practical terms, despite a 50% improvement being substantial. An integer-factor improvement is much better, and those don’t come along every day.

Either way, a watch could be the ideal application for a ceramic battery chemistry. It’s perhaps the least likely device to hit hard surfaces with great force (e.g. drops).

 

[Corporate_Goon]

"Well this is a confusing, poorly-written article that doesn't tell me anything useful. Who wrote this?"

"Oh, financial times."

 

[ERIFNOMI]

One potentially big savings from less weight in electric cars will be better tire longevity. Current EV burn through tires very fast. My nephew has a Rivian truck and his last set of P-Zeros lasted 20K miles. My friends with Teslas say it's about the same for them.

P-zeros don't have a long life. And if that Rivian was running in conserve mode, they're absolutely eating their tires.

Normal tires last just fine on EVs. Our EV has 20k miles on the tires and they're absolutely fine. I think they're Michelin Primacys.

 

[Demosthenes642]

I respectfully disagree, for these reasons, that it's "utterly useless".

• The article itself brings in the topic of vehicle batteries.
• A fair number of comments are discussing vehicles, despite the use case for the reported break-through being small electronics.
• A comparison of energy density values in a standardized measurement, regardless of use case, is an interesting and useful fact in its own right.

It's an FT article so not really up to usual ars standards. I hate being too nit-picky so I'll apologize in advance. The article specifically transitions to a larger discussion of solid state batteries as a goal for EV's and then about why specifically TDK's battery is unsuited to an EV application. If there'd been a statement by TDK that automotive cells using this tech were on their roadmap then sure, but there's nothing like that in there. So, gasoline vs battery for my wireless earbuds? Not really a useful comparison. In addition the energy density of gasoline thing tends to get thrown around as a red herring in anti EV commentary so it's just injecting pointless strawmen into the conversation. Instead if we want to have a discussion on comparative energy density then the OP could have linked to a chart comparing all sorts of energy sources. In fact, here's one right now in handy table form: Energy Density Reference

 

[adespoton]

It will let them make the watch thinner.

https://meincmagazine.com/gadgets/202...-to-chasing-thinness-in-its-hardware-designs/

 

[withak]

Question: You are Apple's lead iPhone designer and you have a new battery technology that is (say) an order of magnitude more dense than your current battery. Do you keep the phone the same size/shape and start advertising week-long battery life (give or take) or do you look for ways to make the phone thinner but still needing to be plugged in daily? Or make some other change?