100-year-life battery is not a new technology
At present, there are two main types of batteries used in new energy vehicles – ternary lithium battery and lithium iron phosphate battery. The former has good charge and discharge performance, but poor safety and low cycle life, only about 1200 times; the latter is just the opposite, with poor charge and discharge performance, but good safety, and can be used for more than 2000 cycles.
In 2021, ternary lithium batteries will account for more than 60% of the global market share. However, due to the rising prices of minerals required for ternary batteries such as lithium, cobalt and nickel, lithium iron phosphate batteries have begun to recover.
Some institutions predict that by 2024, the market share of lithium iron phosphate batteries will surpass that of ternary lithium batteries.
The “100 years battery” is actually a ternary lithium battery. According to Tesla’s partner, the new battery is based on the regular NMC532 battery – a ternary lithium battery.
NMC means that it is a ternary structure of nickel, manganese, and cobalt, and 532 means that the ratio of the three is 5:3:2. Based on NMC532, Dahn has previously developed a “million-mile battery” with a cruising range of one million miles. The “hundred-year battery” is an extension of the concept of “million-mile battery”.
There is still a gap between laboratory data and real-world applications
The paper shows that the research team converted the battery from a polycrystalline cathode to a single crystalline cathode through technical improvements, which avoids rapid decomposition during charge-discharge cycles.
In addition, the new battery operates at 3.8V, while other ternary lithium batteries use 4.2V or higher, and compare to high voltage battery, the lower voltage also greatly extends battery life. In the laboratory environment at 25°C, the modified NMC532 battery has no capacity loss after nearly 2000 charge-discharge cycles;
After 4.5 years of continuous charge-discharge cycles, the researchers found that the battery had only a 5% decay, and the new battery was speculated to have a lifespan of 100 years. However, insiders reminded that this is only speculative data obtained from several years of experiments, and there are still many gaps with practical applications.
On the one hand, although many new energy vehicles are equipped with battery thermal management systems, it is still difficult to achieve a lasting constant temperature in the laboratory at this stage and for a long time in the future. On the other hand, there is still a long distance between the laboratory and the commercialization. If 100-year-life batteries cannot be mass-produced and replicated on a large scale, their commercial value will be very low.
And once compromises are made for mass production, the performance of the product may not meet the ideal conditions in the laboratory.
100-year battery may not be necessary
In fact, electric vehicles do not need a ” 100-year-life battery.”
Relevant regulations indicate that the motor vehicles that have reached a certain mileage are guided to be scrapped; among them, the scrapped mileage of small and micro non-operating passenger vehicles and large non-operating cars is 600,000 kilometers.
Guided scrapping is not mandatory scrapping, but the premise is that the motor vehicle must pass the annual inspection. Taking a step back, even if the battery can really be used for 100 years and the motor vehicle can pass the annual inspection, new energy vehicles still need other auto parts and motor and electronic control systems that are not cheap.
If these parts are aging or damaged, the maintenance cost is also not low, I am afraid it is better to replace the new car. On the other hand, battery technology is also being updated and iterated. Not to mention a hundred years, even if it is only ten years later, the new battery technology may have crushed the “hundred-year battery”.
In the face of higher energy density, smaller and safer batteries, people will choose new technologies. Is the “hundred-year battery” useless? No, its main battlefield may not be new energy vehicles, but the field of energy storage.
The working conditions of energy storage batteries are much better than those of automobiles. Some energy storage batteries have their own air conditioners, which are better at constant temperature and humidity, and do not require high power density. These conditions can make the battery last longer.
For battery manufacturers like lithium top 100 battery companies, the development of battery technology is subject to many factors such as price, policy, safety, etc. It is not clear what direction it will develop in the future, and further observation is needed.
