When titles with rhetorical questions sound almost like dumb questions.
Why is everyone trying to build a solid-state battery?
171–180 of 331 posts
Re: Why is everyone trying to build a solid-state battery?
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is such a euphemism to pretend that you’d like to wait two hours at a refueling station. Anyone who’s ever driven between Seattle and Portland and seen the e16b charging lots of people sleeping in their cars knows there is a whole different side to your rosey picture. EV owners are still internalizing their range anxiety into a benefit. I get it; I like EVs for their around town purpose, but man it’s almost fant…
"This is such a euphemism to pretend that you’d like to wait two hours at a refueling station." There is virtually no EV sold on the market today that takes two hours to charge to 80% at a HVDC charger. "I get it; I like EVs for their around town purpose, but man it’s almost fantasy to sell it as “5-10 minutes every two hours”." The Hyundai Ioniq 5 takes about 20 minutes to go from 10% SOC to 80% SOC in about 18 min…
And you mostly aren’t charging to 80%, usually it’s closer to 40-60%.
Re: Why is everyone trying to build a solid-state battery?
#173We need way more research on batteries. People cant ingine what is possible if we make battery 10x energy dense.
How is billions every year on R&D not enough, especially when you measure consistent improvement year over year in the technology? 10x energy dense does not mean 10x safer. Gasoline is still widely used because it is considered one of the safest options around! The problem is more nuanced than just "let's do all the battery density"
maybe you are right . I was thinking a world where battery improvement is the rate as chip performance improvement ,
Re: Why is everyone trying to build a solid-state battery?
#174We need way more research on batteries. People cant ingine what is possible if we make battery 10x energy dense.
Agreed, but I think people can imagine and companies are very motivated: powertools, phones, laptops, watches, backup UPS, cars, hospital equipment... there's high demand for durable, long-lasting batteries. I think the research is there, it's just complex chemistry. We'll get there. Impressive to see the progress in EV batteries and they've actually turned out to be more durable than first feared.
hard core lipo user here(for DIY). battery is great but it gets balloon after using some time
Re: Why is everyone trying to build a solid-state battery?
#175Aren't sodium batteries close to production and a lot cheaper and safer? Ambri was working on large scale batteries which seemed like a pretty good idea (looks like they ran out of money): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambri_Inc .
Sodium ion batteries are already being mass produced in China. CATL actually just started producing their second generation sodium ion batteries. In the US, Peak energy is doing storage solutions based on sodium ion.
Anyway, you are comparing apples and oranges. While solid state sodium ion might become a thing at some point, it so far isn't. The lithium based solid state batteries currently being readied by several battery companies for mass production around 2028 or so tend to have up to 500-600 wh/kg densities. Sodium ion batteries are currently at or below 175 wh/kg typically. LFP is a bit better, and some high end NMC batteries might do 250ish wh/kg. That would be just the first generation solid state batteries. Densities might improve after that. The theoretical limit is a lot denser than that and there is a lot of money going into researching ways to do better than that.
Of course energy density is just one thing you might optimize for. Other properties you might look at are operating temperatures, amount of charge cycles the battery can handle before it degrades below 85% of its original capacity, the speed at which it can cycle, fire safety, cost, etc. Mostly sodium ion scores very well on all of this except density.
High energy density usually comes at a price. Both in dollars and in compromises with these other things. Think lower lifetime, more constrained temperature ranges, etc. Worth it if weight and volume are really constrained. Like in anything that flies.
Re: Why is everyone trying to build a solid-state battery?
#176We need way more research on batteries. People cant ingine what is possible if we make battery 10x energy dense.
I think, apart from finding better Batteries altoghether, we should build multi-tier batteries inspired by biology. Humans have bloodsugar, sugar in the Liver and then fat. All of them have their respective properties with availability and amount. This way, engineering tradeoffs could be allocated much more fine grained. For example, a while ago I read about a startup building an energy storage where they heat up lar…
sorry in advance , but my POV is .
Most of the things that we copy directly from humans do not work in terms of robustness.
Its like instead of harddrive use human DNA to store the data for 3T years,but no-one is mentioning the bandwidth speed here(which is the most important thing) etc,
I know it has some usecases.Also "one spoon butter is more energy dense than a battery"
but how we are gonna use butter(I dont know enough bio) but it is way harder to convert energy .
Re: Why is everyone trying to build a solid-state battery?
#177We need way more research on batteries. People cant ingine what is possible if we make battery 10x energy dense.
The article says $4B was put into solid state research/companies as of 2025 in the US alone. Seems like they are working on it
maybe, but not enough.
but if there is level 1 to 10 and the chips are level 10, from transistor to today.
the battery would be level 2-3 . if this continues the battery cant keep up with more advance tech,where energy density matters like flying cars,BCI etc .
like people are selling two same products to the same person(same time), because the battery life is bad.
Re: Why is everyone trying to build a solid-state battery?
#178Solid state batteries come in several flavours. Most of them don't stop dendrites. The flavour you want is polymer, single ion conducting solid state with an ion transport activation energy below 10kJ/mol at room temperature and no phase transitions from -40C to 80C. That is the holy grail of SS batteries.
their benefit boiled down (sic) to flammability, or the lack thereof, right ?
Re: Why is everyone trying to build a solid-state battery?
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Liquid gasoline does not have anywhere near the energy of TNT," Energy density of gasoline is approximately 44 to 45 megajoules per kilogram. Energy density of TNT is approximately 4.184 megajoules per kilogram.
A snickers bar has nearly 5× TNT’s energy per kilogram—TNT merely has the habit of being extremely impatient about releasing it.
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