I’m not actually against the spread of electric vehicles — where appropriate — but we’re a long way technically speaking from an all-electric future on the roads. Alongside the vast increase in our electric generation and distribution infrastructure such a change would require, there’s also the practical limitation of what is currently possible in battery technology, and hoped-for improvements will require significant breakthroughs which seem more than just a step beyond our current capabilities:
Nissan Leaf electric vehicle charging.
Photo by Nissan UK
“There are liars, damned liars, and battery guys” – or some variation thereof – is an aphorism commonly attributed to US electro-whizz Thomas Edison.
Edison’s anecdotal frustrations remain valid today because scarcely a month goes by without a promised battery revolution, and scarcely a month goes by without that revolution arriving.
In October, for example, The Register encountered Jagdeep Singh, CEO of QuantumScape, a battery startup that boasted a new type of battery that could double the range of electric vehicles, charge in 15 minutes, and is safer than the lithium-ion that dominates the rechargeable market.
“Ten years ago, we embarked on an ambitious goal that most thought was impossible,” Singh said in a canned statement. “Through tireless work, we have developed a new battery technology that is unlike anything else in the world.”
Singh might disprove Edison’s aphorism and deliver the better batteries the world will so clearly appreciate. But to do so he’ll have to buck a 30-year trend that has seen lithium-ion reign supreme.
Why has the industry stalled? The short answer is that chemistry hasn’t found a way to build a better battery.
“The basic concept of what a battery is hasn’t shifted since the 18th century,” says Professor Thomas Maschmeyer, a chemist at the University of Sydney and founding chairman of Gelion Technology, a battery developer. All batteries, Maschmeyer explains, consist of three main building blocks: a positive electrode, called a cathode; a negative electrode, called an anode; and an electrolyte that acts as a catalyst between the two sides. “These three elements cannot change. So, if you want a breakthrough, it must come from a fundamental change in the chemistry,” Maschmeyer says.
Better living through chemistry
Battery boffins have proposed a periodic table’s worth of alternative compounds that could surpass lithium-ion batteries.These largely fall into two categories. First, batteries that are trying to surpass the energy densities that lithium offers, such as solid-state batteries, lithium-sulphur, and lithium-air. The other is batteries comprised of more abundant materials such as sodium-ion batteries, aluminium-ion, and magnesium-ion batteries.
But changing the chemistry of batteries is easier said than done, says Professor Jacek Jasieniak, a professor of material sciences and engineering at Monash University. He compares changing one element in a battery to changing a chemical in a pharmaceutical. “Often solving one problem exacerbates another,” he says.
