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Power Hardware Technology

New Manufacturing Technique Halves Cost of Lithium-Ion Batteries 214

Posted by Soulskill from the current-events dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Experts in materials science at MIT have developed a new process for creating lithium-ion batteries that will drop the associated production costs by half. The researchers say fundamental battery construction techniques have been refined over the past two decades, but not re-thought. "The new battery design is a hybrid between flow batteries and conventional solid ones: In this version, while the electrode material does not flow, it is composed of a similar semisolid, colloidal suspension of particles. Chiang and Carter refer to this as a 'semisolid battery.' This approach greatly simplifies manufacturing, and also makes batteries that are flexible and resistant to damage, says Chiang. ... Instead of the standard method of applying liquid coatings to a roll of backing material, and then having to wait for that material to dry before it can move to the next manufacturing step, the new process keeps the electrode material in a liquid state and requires no drying stage at all. Using fewer, thicker electrodes, the system reduces the conventional battery architecture's number of distinct layers, as well as the amount of nonfunctional material in the structure, by 80 percent."
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New Manufacturing Technique Halves Cost of Lithium-Ion Batteries More

New Manufacturing Technique Halves Cost of Lithium-Ion Batteries

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  • Ahm Mo Call (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25, 2015 @11:38AM (#49986351)

    I'm going to call Bullshit on the price claims.

    Reality... Experts at MIT have developed an idea that looks very promising as a source for funding dollars.

    • Re:Ahm Mo Call (Score:5, Interesting)

      by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Thursday June 25, 2015 @12:01PM (#49986591) Journal
      Yeah, if this was somebody else, I would agree with you.
      BUT, this is Dr. chiang who has been fairly accurate with all that he publishes.
      As such, I would be willing to guess that he is a lot closer to 100 than others.

    • Re:Ahm Mo Call (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anubis IV ( 1279820 ) on Thursday June 25, 2015 @12:44PM (#49987109)

      At least do a little digging if you're going to call BS. From the article:

      The company has so far made about 10,000 batteries on its prototype assembly lines, most of which are undergoing testing by three industrial partners

      So, this isn't some "in 5-10 years" battery technology we'll never see. This is stuff that has already been coming off the assembly line by the thousands, meaning that they've been able to accurately gauge the actual costs involved in manufacturing. Moreover, their pedigree is pretty good. One of the co-founders for this company was a co-founder over at A123, which many of us already recognize as another player in this space. This isn't their first time getting up and running with battery manufacturing.

      Which is to say, these are people with a proven track record of research and manufacturing experience in this field, they already have an assembly line up and running, and they've already placed around 10,000 of their products in the field for testing. You're welcome to call BS, but I'm inclined to disagree.

    • Ahm Mo Call (Score:3, Insightful)
      by Anonymous Coward on 06-25-15 9:38 (#49986351)
      I'm going to call Bullshit on the price claims.

      You're an anonymous coward, you don't get to use the word "I'm" and you don't get to be taken seriously when you say "bullshit".

      If you want to give us a reason to give a shit what "you" think, then log in and tell us who you are. Otherwise, what makes you different from all the other anti-Musk trolls?

  • The future is coming. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by riverat1 ( 1048260 ) on Thursday June 25, 2015 @11:43AM (#49986407)

    If this pans out it probably means the end to the claims that solar PV and wind power can't affordably supply us with all of our electricity needs. It also makes electric cars all that much more affordable. Elon Musk may need to redesign his battery factory.

    • "It also makes electric cars all that much more affordable."

      Hopefully, because currently they aren't even in the ballpark of affordable.
      • Really? BMW i3 is $40k which, while certainly higher than the median new car price of $33k, is still 'within the ballpark'. I'm seeing them more frequently in my middle-class town. If you want to go below the median, you can get the Nissan Leaf for $30k. The VW e-Golf is $33k, and the Ford Focus Electric is $29k. Of course you CAN go high-end with the Tesla for $70k, but that's the exception, not the rule. And these prices are all before any tax credits.

    • Re:The future is coming. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Nethemas the Great ( 909900 ) on Thursday June 25, 2015 @11:58AM (#49986555)
      That does bring up an interesting question. I wonder just how flexible Elon's new factory, or others for that matter, are with regards to adopting process improvements such as this when they arise.
      • It sounds like this particular technology doesn't really change the manufacturing process other than to remove drying time. So it can probably be implemented with little difficulty.

    • Re:The future is coming. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by nine-times ( 778537 ) <nine.times@gmail.com> on Thursday June 25, 2015 @12:10PM (#49986679) Homepage

      The summary highlights price, but also says, "Using fewer, thicker electrodes, the system reduces the conventional battery architecture's number of distinct layers, as well as the amount of nonfunctional material in the structure, by 80 percent." So I'm left wondering, does this also have a substantial improvement in terms of size/weight of the batteries?

      Because from what I remember reading, a big part of the difficulty in engineering electric cars is that batteries are big and heavy. When you add enough batteries to power the car, you've also added a bunch of weight, which means that you now need to add even more batteries to compensate for the energy needed to move the weight of all the batteries you've added.

      • Re:The future is coming. (Score:5, Informative)

        by Firethorn ( 177587 ) on Thursday June 25, 2015 @12:35PM (#49986975) Homepage Journal

        Because from what I remember reading, a big part of the difficulty in engineering electric cars is that batteries are big and heavy.

        This was what I'd call a 'critical deal-breaker' in the days of Lead-Acid, critical for NiMH, but while still an issue with LiIon, it's nowhere near as 'unmanageable'. This is how Tesla can manage to build a car that can travel over 300 miles(with some hypermile driving, but still close to 300 even without) completely unrecharged.

        Lead Acid: .14 MJ/kg source [epectec.com] wiki [wikipedia.org]
        NiMH: .36 MJ/kg
        LiIon: .46 MJ/kg

        Wikipedia lists LiIon as 'expensive', but the price has been dropping significantly every year for years. So what happens if both this and Musk's battery factory work out and car sized LiIon batteries are now 25% of the cost they were, say, 5 years ago?

        Way back in the lead-acid days I said 'there's nothing wrong with electric cars that a battery that stores twice as much power for half the cost wouldn't fix'.

        Well, LiIon fixes the 'twice the power' part over lead-acid. It's just as bulky(generally) as lead-acid, but it weighs a feather compared to a lead-acid battery of the same volume, and space can be dealt with when you're designing a car to use the battery from the ground up. For example, Tesla's battery is basically a sled that screws into the bottom of the car.

        But back then it cost over twice as much as lead acid. Today we're finally reaching that 'magic' point.

        • Yeah, but I guess my question is, if it reduces the "nonfunctional material in the structure" by 80%, I'm assuming that's by volume, and that means the battery would take up 20% of its current size to achieve the same results. I'd assume (perhaps wrongly) that would mean thinner smartphones and laptops and whatnot. If you look at Apple's new Macbook (the one with the USB-C connector), the electronics take up very little space, and the device is mostly battery.

          I would also guess that the 80% reduction in

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by swb ( 14022 )

            I wonder if that's a case of misleading by proportion.

            It reduces the nonfunctional material in the battery by 80%, but what portion of the battery is nonfunctional material?

            If a 100kg battery has 5kg nonfunctional material, losing 80% of it is nice, but you're only losing 4% of the total mass. The same kind of thing goes for volume. If the battery is 1000cc and the nonfunctional material is 50cc, losing 80% is great but its a much smaller part of the entire volume.

            I'd guess that this is why the bigger cla

          • Yeah, but I guess my question is, if it reduces the "nonfunctional material in the structure" by 80%, I'm assuming that's by volume, and that means the battery would take up 20% of its current size to achieve the same results.

            Be careful about assuming. There's a reason I mentioned volume separately from weight, and both are valid measurements for this scenario.

            The only way the battery would end up being 20% of it's 'current size', whether that's weight or volume, is if it consisted 100% of non-functional material, which we know isn't true. 'Non-functional material' in this case is probably a little vague, but would consist of things like strength members, anode/cathode material that never acts as anode/cathode, electrolyte tha

            • Ah, thanks. I misread the quote somehow. For some reason, I thought it was saying it removed 80% of the material by removing nonfunctional material, rather than what it clearly says, which is that, of the nonfunctional material, it removed 80%.
    • There currently is no where near enough manufacturing capacity to build enough solar panels, wind mills, or batteries to supply the world with its electricity needs in the next two decades. Running purely on renewables is not a realistic option. Even if manufacturing was magically ramped up it still wouldn't be possible unless the materials used changes there will not be enough rare earth minerals to support that many solar panels, wind farms, or batteries.

      • If there is demand it will drive an increase in supply. Rare earth minerals are not really all that rare, just not as well concentrated as some more common minerals. I don't see any of your cavils as show stoppers.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by zieroh ( 307208 )

        There currently is no where near enough manufacturing capacity to build enough solar panels, wind mills, or batteries to supply the world with its electricity needs in the next two decades. Running purely on renewables is not a realistic option. Even if manufacturing was magically ramped up it still wouldn't be possible unless the materials used changes there will not be enough rare earth minerals to support that many solar panels, wind farms, or batteries.

        This statement makes your sig line that much funnier. You must make a fortune.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by frnic ( 98517 )

        Your statement is true, there is no where near enough capacity to manufacture what is required. But, you post makes it seem like you leave it at that. Meaning, no point trying to replace the existing infrastructure, because it is a big expensive long term project...

        I prefer to say that if it is profitable, corporations will make it happen. (Notice I left out caveats like safe, works as advertised, etc) And the more profitable it appears, the faster they will make it happen.

        We will see where things like this

    • "Musk may need to redesign his battery factory." ....

      "undergoing testing by three industrial partners"

      uh, he could be one of the 3 considering how forward thinking he is-- redesign not needed...

    • Sure, but when do we get 36V lithium batteries to replace the 12V lead batteries in the IC cars? Why do only EV's get the benefits of lighter weight, higher voltage batteries?

  • Cluster? (Score:2, Funny)

    by moehoward ( 668736 )

    Hello,

    May I please have a Beowulf Cluster of these?

    Regards,
    Elon

  • Even if this is true, it will not cut the cost of batteries in half. It only cuts the cost of manufacturing. The trouble is, most of the cost of batteries comes from the raw materials. So I wouldn't expect a huge drop in cost to the consumer.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Hadlock ( 143607 )

      Raw lithium is wildly abundant, supply greatly outstrips demand.

    • So I wouldn't expect a huge drop in cost to the consumer.

      No, instead you should expect a huge jump in executive bonuses.

      From what I've seen, all things which lower costs fail to lower consumer prices.

      • Yeah, buddy. I'm still paying $10 per megabyte for my hard drives and $50 per megabyte for my RAM. My cell phone still cost $7000, and my long distance calling is still $0.25 per minute.

      • Back in the 90's, we had to choose between getting a laptop with ni-mh, OR, paying an extra $300 for li-ion. Now, all laptops are with li-ion.
    • Do you have a source for that assertion? I was under the impression that raw materials for the lith-ion batteries was negligible.
    • Uh, no. The real costs is the high temps that are needed. Lithium itself is relatively cheap and relatively little is used. For example, most li-ion batteries are only about 1/20 lithium. So, in the nissan leaf, it only uses 9 lbs of lithium. At current price of 300/lb, that is only $2700 of lithium. So, why does their batteries costs 15,000? Because of the processing that is required. The costs of a li-ion battery is about 2/5 chemicals and 3/5 (or more) in processing costs.

      • Uh, no. The real costs is the high temps that are needed.

        I recently watched an interview with one of the founders of A123, and he explained that their lithium-ion chemistry doesn't require high temperatures. The only high-energy part of their manufacturing process comes during initial charging and testing.

      • Where does cost of lithium end up $300 / lb, i.e. ~ $660 / kg ?

        I'm seeing prices of bulk lithium carbonate at $6000 per metric ton, i.e. about $6 per kg.

        Molecular weight of lithium carbonate is about 74, which has two lithiums in it at about 6.9 each, so total lithium is ~13.8 of the 74,
        so cost of elemental lithium ignoring reduction costs is ~ $32 per kg.

        Where do you get anything near $300 / lb?

  • Wrong headline.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Dutchmaan ( 442553 ) on Thursday June 25, 2015 @11:54AM (#49986523) Homepage

    "New Manufacturing Technique Doubles Profit of Lithium-Ion Batteries"

    There, now it feels right.

    • I appreciate cynicism as much as the next person but in this case given present demand, Elon Musk, as well as China's willingness to undercut others that's actually highly unlikely. Within the next few years I think it very likely that we'll see a considerable expansion of manufacturing capacity for batteries.

      Elon is managing to change the climate within the auto industry by a sufficient degree that EVs are going to enter the mainstream in the west. China's polution problems mean it has no other choice bu

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by zieroh ( 307208 )

        Elon is managing to change the climate within the auto industry by a sufficient degree that EVs are going to enter the mainstream in the west. China's pollution problems mean it has no other choice but to adopt EVs.

        I see what you did there.

  • this looks interesting (Score:3)

    by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Thursday June 25, 2015 @11:56AM (#49986545) Journal
    Most of the announcements by Eastern/South East Asian Academicians, either in east/south east Asia, or in the states, are normally just total BS.
    However, Dr. Chiang is the exact opposite. When he speaks, it is always straight forward R&D that he has done. Basically, this is something will make a big difference in batteries.

    Now, I wonder, what kind of impact this will have on Tesla and the gigafactory?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PRMan ( 959735 )

      If Elon Musk is smart, he will either:

      1. License Dr. Chiang's patent

      2. Create a similar method that escapes the patent

    • I cannot imagine the Japanese doing that. Did you really just mean "China", but didn't want to put too fine a point on it? :)

      (North Korean scientific claims, such as the recent ebola/aids/whatever cure are so obviously silly that they don't merit serious consideration)

  • My cycle needed a new battery. Major brand lead-acid replacements were ~$120, off brands less. But I found a lithium-iron with three times the cranking capacity and the same case size for $140. It also carried a three-year replacement guarantee, instead of a lead-acid's typical 6-month one, as cycles' vibration and lack of winter use kill L-As in a year, typically, And, a great benefit to cycles, it weighed ten pounds less, making a reduction in the total weight of the bike by ~2 per cent.

    So far (two wee

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by swb ( 14022 )

      Where did you buy it?

      Also, I assume the battery has some kind of charge controller integrated into it so that it was a direct replacement for a regular lead acid battery.

      • I bought it here. http://www.batterystuff.com/ba... [batterystuff.com] I live very near Grants Pass, so I picked it up. The pickup price was $139. The internet price with "free" shipping is ten dollars higher.

        It may have a charge controller. I talked to the folks there at length about charging. The bottom line is more than 14Volts and less than 15.0000!! with high amperage. Up to 60 amps was mentioned. Charging time is said to be about six minutes with the right charger. I was told for this battery size, a 6-amp charge

        • It says right on the ad you linked that they recommend the use of a ctek lithium charger. This means that your stock alternator setup and/or your normal car battery charger are likely going to decrease the lifespan of that battery by applying improper charging voltage. It also says on the ad that the cells are "internally balanced"... what, it's made of matched cells? how 1980s R/C car of them. But that's not the best way to charge Li-Ion batteries. The best way is with a "balance charger" which tracks indi

          • It says right on the ad you linked that they recommend the use of a ctek lithium charger

            Their "tech" said otherwise. I'm sure they would like to sell you a charger that costs more than the battery it charges!

            You're right about alternators' voltage regulation, but only partially so. My motorcycle -- not car -- puts out 14.4 V max at ~2500 engine rpm and is rated to produce 50 amps. 50 amps would be too much current for a lead-acid, so we'll see how this battery fares in service.

            LiFePO4 batteries are not

            • Their "tech" said otherwise. I'm sure they would like to sell you a charger that costs more than the battery it charges!

              What I'm specifically worried about is overvolting the battery while it's actulally charging. Flooded batteries are a lot more tolerant of a half-volt (between friends?) than are LiPos. Still, LiFePos should be better in that regard. Ideally, your voltage regulator would keep the charging voltage closer to the current battery voltage than it would for a "traditional" battery, and monitor charging current to determine the actual charging voltage. That's all the fancy chargers are doing.

              Anyway, I don't think

              • I checked the alternator output with a known-accurate digital VOM. 14.42 V max with a fully-charged LiFePO4 at 13.2 V.

                We'll see. For the price, if it will get me through this season, it was worth it, considering the weight saving.

          • Uh, I forgot to thank you for the information; I found it very useful.

            Thank you!

  • From the article:

    "By 2020, Chiang estimates that 24M will be able to produce batteries for less than $100 per kilowatt-hour of capacity"

    That's a pretty bold claim considering a 1KW lithium ion battery currently cost 10x that.

    • That's a pretty bold claim considering a 1KW lithium ion battery currently cost 10x that.

      ***shrugs***

      Harddrive prices fell that fast. Or perhaps faster. In my lifetime, they increased in capacity by a factor of 100,000 or so, and the price per HDD fell by a factor of five or more (100000x the drive for 1/5th the money)....

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by radl33t ( 900691 )
      Tesla Powerwall will sell at $350 per kWh, which is right in the ballpark of where people have figured tesla and leaf batteries are being sold at...

  • No doubt Apple will use this improvement in high-demand technology to justify a price hike.

  • Elon Musk buys the patent so his new mega factory isn't obsolete before it's finished

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