This video is sponsored by EcoFlow. Upfront cost and range are key factors when
buying an electric vehicle (EV), but spending hours waiting to charge your EV is another
major roadblock on your way to EV ownership. It’s one of the most common questions I
hear from non-EV owners, “how long does it take to charge?” What if we could recharge
an EV battery in less than 10 minutes? Would that change your mind? Well, there’s some
interesting battery advancements from companies like Battery Streak that may be making this
dream a reality sooner than you think.
I’m Matt Ferrell … welcome to Undecided.
Let’s face it. Electric cars still aren’t cheap enough, mostly due to battery manufacturing
costs, but that’s changing quickly. According to Bloomberg, the cost of a lithium-ion battery
pack dropped by 89% over the last 10 years, reaching $132/kWh in 2021. By 2023 battery
costs are expected to approach the $100/kWh threshold, at which point EV prices will be
on par with fossil-fuelled cars. A high price tag isn’t the only thing suppressing EV
enthusiasm. You might have heard about range anxiety, right? Apparently, it’s a pretty
common condition for potential EV buyers. 50% of them won’t get an EV just because
they’re afraid of not making it to the next charging station or perhaps waiting there
for hours while charging their car. But is this fear grounded in actual facts? Battery
energy density has nearly tripled over the last 10 years. This means your EV battery
can now store much more power per unit of volume/weight, which gives you a longer range.
To be more specific, the median range of EVs sold in the US in 2020 hit the 250-mile mark,
which is 4x higher than what you could get in 2011. However, if you’re planning a long
road trip, you’ll have to do a pit-stop at some point. From my personal experience
with my Tesla Model 3, my car is typically charged up and ready to go in the time it
takes for me to stop and grab a bite to eat. No big deal. As fast as that is, it’s still
not on par with filling a tank with gas. The trouble is that fast chargers still aren’t
as plentiful as they need to be, or as fast as people want them to be. But things are
changing fast…or should I say charging fast.
Last October, Desten boasted of having an ultra-fast battery that could go from flat
to full in 4 min and 40 seconds. That’s what I call a lightning charging speed. Talking
battery jargon, this would be somewhere in between a 10C and a 20C charging rate. A C
rate is the amount of current flowing into the battery while charging. The faster the
current, the higher the rate, the lower the time needed to charge up the battery. Having
said that, the Chinese company hasn’t disclosed much about their secret sauce behind their
ultra-high charging rate yet. But someone else showed another streak of clarity on their
fast charging tech…a longer-lasting battery that recharges in only 10 minutes without
overheating. Before we can investigate these claims, let’s zero in on what’s slowing
down fast charging.
I don’t want to add to your range anxiety, but there are still some pressing challenges
to solve before EVs charging could rival a gas tank’s refueling time. The fastest chargers
available today are called level 3 or direct-current fast charging (DCFC) models. You can’t install
these at home since they work between 400 and 900 V, which is much higher than standard
residential electricity. The most powerful chargers, operating at 350 kW, can charge
a typical long range EV to 80% in about 20 minutes. These DCFC chargers are still pretty
rare. You can find them in about 26% of the public charging stations in the US. On top
of that, 90% of DCFC ports across the US network operate below 300 kW. So, why’s that? Mostly
because they’re too expensive to roll out. For example, you’d need $150,000 to install
a 150-kW charger. Besides infrastructure costs, heat is another hot topic for fast charging.
That’s because it can cause dangerous side-effects. When you send too much current through the
charging cables and the battery’s internal cell, you’ll have more energy lost as heat
because of the resistance encountered along the way. As a result, the battery liquid electrolyte
may boil off, which builds pressure inside the cell. This process, called swelling or
gassing, could lead to ruptures or even explosions. Not to mention the battery cables becoming
piping hot. Some researchers came up with an innovative cooling method that lets battery
cords handle 5x the current of a Tesla Supercharger. However, that’s still an early-stage prototype.
Another key hurdle to overcome is to find more efficient raw materials for the battery
anode. In a commercial battery, this is typically made of graphite. So, what’s wrong with
it? Basically, while charging, a cloud of lithium ions, a.k.a. concentration gradient,
shuttles from the cathode towards the anode. Once they reach the negative pole, ions nestle
in the space between graphite layers. This process, a.k.a. intercalation, becomes messy
as you increase the current intensity. Instead of diffusing inside the graphite matrix, ions
lay onto its surface and form a metallic plate. That’s widely known as lithium plating.
This lithium metal barrier prevents further ions from accessing the graphite internal
structure. Which means your battery won’t recharge. So, what do we do? One way to sort
this out would be to charge the battery at higher temperatures, like 60°C (140F). However,
heating up the battery shortens its life. When increasing the charging temperature of
a lithium-ion battery from 25°C (77F) to 55°C (131F), researchers found a graphite
anode degrades up to 8x more over 50 cycles. Ultimately, this bites into your battery lifespan.
In other words, it’s a vicious circuit. Researchers found a way to address this issue
by exposing the battery to 60°C (140F) only for a brief period of time, but that was only
at bench lab scale. Alternatively, we could reengineer the anode design to minimize overheating
when fast charging. That’s what Battery Streak has done.
But before I get into Battery Streak, I’d like to talk about another cool storage technology
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Last October, CBMM, a world leader in niobium products, acquired 20% of the startup, Battery
Streak. Thanks to the Brazilian investor, the US-based company will develop their niobium-containing
anode technology. This will let your battery achieve an 80% charge in only 10 minutes.
The company also claims their innovation could make batteries safer due to their methods
of controlling the heating during charging. Based on their testing, when charged at a
6C rate at ambient temperature their battery generated a thermal gradient of only 8°C/14°F.
This is a much lower heat generation compared to a commercial lithium-ion battery like Panasonic
NCR18650PF, which can have an average temperature rise of ca. 27°C/49°F when charged at a
4C rate. So a lower charging rate, but a higher temperature. Besides an improved user experience,
their technology could help a lot with a battery pack’s thermal management. This could translate
into an optimized battery design and lower costs for manufacturers. I had a chance to
talk to Battery Streak VP Marketing, Dan Alpern, to ask for further insights.
> “I think there will be companies that are reluctant to dismiss their thermal management,
but I think as we prove our technology and they see that it's not needed, they'll start
saving more space and we'll see an increase in energy density by not having to have so
much equipment and a harness for thermal management.”
That’s not the only perk battery producers will get from using Battery Streak’s technology.
This material can be used in existing manufacturing plants without the need for operational expenditures.
Think of the benefits for battery giants like Panasonic, CATL, Tesla and others, which can
license Battery Streak technology and use it on their massive production facilities
without much effort.
> “One of the great benefits of our material is that there's going to be 0 cost for them
to switch to our technology. This material can be used on existing lithium-ion battery
lines with today’s equipment.”
> “There's no need to retool or create a new factory to handle this. How the process
works is they just need to clean everything off from the old batch before they start with
our material.”
Besides a greater safety for users and potential cost savings for battery producers, Battery
Streak touts a high coulombic efficiency (CE) among its tech advantages. As a side note,
CE is basically the ratio between the charge you get out of the battery and the charge
you put in over a charging/discharging cycle. Their battery will retain 80% of its capacity
after 3,000 cycles, which would outperform Tesla’s current batteries at around 1,500
cycles.
> “Our testing has shown that we're getting to 3,000 cycles at eighty and we've gone as
far out as 9,000 cycles to 60. So what's really interesting about it is that this material
has a very linear and predictable progression.”
So, what’s their…streak…er trick? It’s called Niobia, which is their patented material.
This is based on niobium oxide and has a nanoporous structure. Thanks to its tiny pores, Niobia
has an extremely large surface area per unit of volume. This is the key point, where the
magic happens. Instead of intercalating within the anode matrix, lithium ions link to Niobia’s
surface through electrostatic forces. Doing so, lithium-ions have to travel over a shorter
range. Plus, you don’t have any heat-releasing chemical phase transitions that typically
occur during the intercalation process.
> “Our nanostructured material process allows batteries to charge without a chemical phase
change.”
In other words, Niobia charges more like a capacitor rather than a chemical battery.
Combine all these together and you have faster and safer charging, all thanks to niobium.
You may have heard a lot of buzz around companies using other anode components like silicon,
but why haven't we heard much about niobium?
> “For the first time publicly last week I presented our technology at NAATBatt International.
So for a long time, we haven't been talking to too many people about this technology.
So I think that's probably why there hasn't been the buzz you mentioned about silicon
and other types of technologies.”
It sounds like we’re going to hear more on niobium in the future. Unlike critical
minerals such as nickel and cobalt, the niobium supply chain seems to be less prone to disruptions.
Based on what Dan said, Battery Streak has clearly been looking into future proofing
their supply chain.
> “We've had a Mckinsey study done to look at projections both on the markets themselves
and the availability. CBMM, our partner, has no concerns about the future supply and they're
ready to ramp up production and ship mega tons of material out as soon as we deliver
the customer base with our technology. I also mention that we received an NSF grant. We're
currently working on a cobalt-free cathode and so that'll help with our next generation
battery.”
That sounds reassuring, but where is Battery Streak at with their tech development?
> “Our technology is out of the lab. We are working with prototypes, we are doing
product demonstrations and testing with our future customers and partners.”
> “We have a long line of potential customers that are ready to accept test cells and validate
our technology, and that's what we're looking at for the next six to twelve months.”
Battery Streak shared some pictures of the sample they’re sending to their partners
for verification. As you can see, the battery tabs are much larger than the normal ones.
This is because they handle a higher amount of power.
> “We're doing 2 things right now. We're using aluminum instead of copper and we're
using the wider tabs to handle the higher current.”
I can hear you already. Where’s the catch? Well, just like anything else, Battery Streak
tech isn’t the perfect solution across the board. I’m going to hold Dan to one of them…
> “We have a little less energy density than some of the top battery technologies,
maybe 20% less.”
So there is a tradeoff in energy density to get the benefits of lower heat and longer
cycle life. Looking at the wider picture, another challenge for commercializing this
technology is charging infrastructure. As stated by the company, they’ll need a 500-kW
charger to provide a 60-kWh car with 20 miles per minute, which isn’t a thing yet. We’ll
need substantial investments to make it happen. As for the cost and progress of their production
scale-up, I picked Dan’s brain for more details.
> “Our financial people are still running the numbers on what the final costs are going
to look like when we get to a full production. We're currently in that process right now.
We have new reactors coming. We'll increase our production from hundreds of grams of material
a day to over four kilograms a day. So that'll help to give a better answer to this.”
I don’t know how long it will take for Battery Streak to reach the market, but their material
sounds promising. And the other interesting thing about Niobia is that its applications
go beyond the automotive industry. The company is exploring a wide range of use cases, including
portable medical devices and industrial robots.
> “For energy storage systems, maybe a hybrid model that will alleviate the peak loading
and the harm discharge does to traditional lithium-ion battery systems.”
I’d love to have this in my phone.
The charging speed race isn’t exclusive to Battery Streak. In January 2021 Storedot
produced the first ever 5-min charge battery in a factory. So again, we’re not talking
about lab stuff. The Israeli company churned out 1,000 batteries in a manufacturing facility
in China. According to the Storedot website, their extreme fast-charging (XFC) battery
prototype can give you a 17 miles per minute charge capability and they’re expecting
to scale this up to 25 miles per minute by 2028. Just to give you some perspective, this
is higher than the target suggested by the Department of Energy (DOE) in a 2017 study
to enable fast charging and it’s also higher than what fastest commercial chargers could
currently deliver. IStoredot didn’t give out many details on their battery working
conditions. The company said their Flash Battery will need much more powerful chargers than
those used today to deliver their 5-min promise, but they haven’t specified how powerful.
As mentioned earlier, that’s a key detail. Also, they reported a 70% capacity retention
after 1,700 cycles, which doesn’t improve the durability of current Tesla cars or beat
out Battery Streak’s tech.
Tesla is also on the fast charging path too. The EV pioneer is developing Tesla Silicon
for their new fast charging batteries anode. According to Applied Materials’ Managing
Director Jim Cushing, a 30% silicon loading in a battery anode would deliver a 4C charge
rate, which means going from 0 to 100% in 15 minutes. So, what’s so special about
silicon? This material has a greater potential than graphite of reducing lithium plating.
When you incorporate silicon in the anode graphitic matrix, lithium ions will find more
space to go through. Silicon could potentially store 10x more energy than graphite, using
it would allow the design of thinner anodes. This means lithium ions will meet less resistance
while being carried through the bulk of the anode and will be less prone to pile up over
its surface.
Nevertheless, silicon isn’t hassle-free. During charge and discharge cycles, silicon
can undergo drastic expansion and contraction, causing stresses in the electrode. These stresses
will ultimately lead to its failure. It’s something all companies using silicon have
to find ways to accommodate.
Using more efficient materials and designs, companies are working out some of the fast
charging kinks. Having more range in less time would translate into smaller batteries
and less charging stations to be built, thus…short-circuiting…the perceived EV user experience downside. However,
none of the ultra-fast charging batteries have reached the market yet. On top of that,
our current charging infrastructure isn’t exactly ready for it. That’s why it’ll
still take time and money to reduce our range anxiety level.
When do you think we’ll start seeing fast charging batteries like these in the market?
Jump in the comments and let me know. And if you have knowledge on this, or work in
the industry, please share your experience so we can learn more together. You can also
join my Discord server and talk to other members of the community. The link is in the description.
And thanks as always to my patrons. All of your direct support really helps with producing
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