Solid State of Affairs
Breakthrough batteries are just around the corner. Again.
“Constant repetition carries conviction.” – Robert Collier
There is an overlap in the Venn diagram of the media’s need to drive clicks, the public’s fascination with science, and the potential impact of certain inventions on society at large that we like to refer to as the Science Hype Cycle™. Veterans of the sciences—be they in academia or industry—recognize the pattern well. Claims of a step-change in technology are trumpeted by people who should probably know better, and the media dutifully amplifies the magnitude of the progress and the utopian potential (once a few minor kinks are worked out—but naturally, the kinks earn far less headline space than the utopia). Nearly all such cycles wash down the media memory hole, only to be repeated months later with a fresh set of claims.
Certain fields of science are especially susceptible to such shenanigans, including the pursuit of room-temperature superconductors, the drive to cure cancer, and the development of batteries that will free society from fossil fuels. Within the last category, solid-state batteries deserve special mention, as the world has been a mere three years away from this gamechanger for at least four decades. Ten months ago, we visited the topic to appraise claims that Toyota and Idemitsu were on the cusp of commercializing a solid-state battery that would “eventually enable EVs to go 932 miles on a single charge and power up in just 10 minutes.” We concluded our evaluation as follows:
“If solid-state batteries were on the verge of commercialization, we should expect to be wowed by working prototypes with step-change performance in the near future. Given the timelines communicated by Toyota and Idemitsu, we are unlikely to witness such an event anytime soon – at least not from them. Investors will have few tangible milestones against which to measure Toyota’s progress in the coming years …
As much as we respect Toyota’s track record and would welcome a revolutionary step-change in battery performance, the totality of our analysis leaves us skeptical. Will solid-state batteries eventually displace current lithium-ion technology? We assume so. Will Toyota be among the first traditional automakers to do it? Probably. But on balance, we find the current headlines overly optimistic and insufficiently supported by the facts. The development of new battery architectures is a notoriously tough slog, a view that is only reinforced by Toyota’s long and frustrating journey in this space.”
There has since been little announced in the way of progress on the Toyota-Idemitsu front, proving once again that hope travels much faster than reality in the internet era. Fear not, however, because a shiny new miracle from Samsung is just over the horizon. We turn to PC Magazine for the familiar details:
“The new batteries—which promise to improve vehicle range, decrease charging times, and eliminate risk of battery fires—could go into mass production as soon as 2027. Multiple automakers have been reportedly testing samples. Samsung did not list any by name but it's worked with Hyundai, Stellantis, and General Motors, among others…
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the batteries won't be cheap. They will initially go in ‘super premium EVs’ and will offer 900 to 1,000 kilometers (559-621 miles) of range and improved safety.”
The technique of using the magic phrase “as soon as [Year N + 3]” is surely more tried-and-tested than the batteries being described, but the resurrection of the solid-state dream does serve one useful purpose: it gives us cause to scan the electric vehicle sector for a level-headed assessment of the current state of battery development. Let’s embark on one of our own.