In the tide of automobile electrification transformation, the technical development route of power batteries has attracted much attention from the outside world, and solid-state batteries have become an important direction for the development of power batteries in the future.
Compared with the lithium-ion batteries that are now commonly used, all-solid-state batteries have many advantages in terms of energy density, charging performance and cost, and are regarded as an advanced technology that can change the development of the automotive industry, which has also attracted global auto giants to increase their bets.
Nissan plans to start production in 2028
At the end of November 2021, Nissan Motor announced its "Vision 2030" to launch an electric vehicle model equipped with Nissan's original all-solid-state battery by fiscal year 2028, and plans to build a pilot plant in Yokohama, Japan in fiscal 2024, to continuously study the pilot production in terms of materials, design and manufacturing processes.
On April 8, Nissan Motor held an all-solid-state battery technical briefing online, announcing a pilot production facility for stacked soft-pack all-solid-state battery cells, which is located at the Nissan Automotive Research Center in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan, to further promote the development and application of all-solid-state batteries. At the meeting, Nissan also once again clarified the time point for official production of all-solid-state batteries in 2028.
Compared with traditional lithium-ion batteries, Nissan's all-solid-state battery has nearly twice the energy density of the former, while having excellent charge and discharge performance, which can further shorten the charging time. In addition, battery costs are also drastically reduced as all-solid-state batteries reduce the use of expensive raw materials.
According to Nissan's plan, by fiscal year 2028, the all-solid-state battery can reduce the battery cost to $75 per kWh, while through continuous innovation, the cost will be further reduced to $65 per kWh in the future to achieve cost parity for electric vehicle models and fuel models.
At that time, Nissan Motor plans to apply all-solid-state batteries to a wider range of segments such as pickup trucks, thereby further enhancing the competitiveness of electric vehicle models.
Kunio Nakapan, Executive Vice President of Nissan Motor Company and responsible for R&D and product development, said: "The knowledge and experience accumulated by Nissan Motor in its previous R&D practice will help the development of all-solid-state batteries. At present, we already have an important accumulation of technology. In the future, Nissan's R&D and production departments will continue to collaborate to make full use of pilot production facilities to accelerate the commercial application of all-solid-state batteries. ”
It is understood that Nissan is cooperating with nasa, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Waseda University and other units to explore high-speed materials, simulated material functional principles, high-durability electrolyte material design and internal visualization analysis of batteries around the basic fields of computational science, materials science and high-level analysis/analysis.
Seize the next generation of battery technology
Nissan is not the only one who pays attention to the all-solid-state battery technology route, and the international large-scale OEMs have already begun to seize this technical route. Ouyang Minggao, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, once said that European, American and Japanese and South Korean companies have taken a leading position in the research and development of the next generation of solid-state batteries.
On April 12, Honda announced its latest initiatives in the field of pure electric vehicles, revealing that it is accelerating the independent research and development of next-generation batteries, and decided to build a demonstration production line for all-solid-state batteries currently under development, with plans to invest about 43 billion yen and start in the spring of 2024.
Toyota plans to achieve small-scale mass production of all-solid-state batteries by 2025, and will first be installed in hybrid models, and by 2030, Toyota's all-solid-state batteries will achieve continuous and stable production. As early as 2010, Toyota had launched a solid-state battery with a cruising range of more than 1,000KM, and an electric vehicle equipped with Toyota's all-solid-state battery obtained a license in August last year and opened a road test.
In 2018, japan's national research institute New Energy Industry Technology Comprehensive Development Agency (NEDO) spent 10 billion yen to start the second phase of solid-state lithium-ion battery research and development projects, including the above three OEMs, member companies can share the development of basic technologies.
In addition to Japan, European and American vehicle companies are also laying out early in the field of solid-state batteries. Volkswagen has invested in solid-state battery developer QuantumScape on several occasions and plans to start mass production of solid-state batteries between 2024 and 2025.
BMW and Ford have joined forces to invest in Solid Power, a U.S. solid-state battery manufacturer, in which BMW plans to launch a prototype with solid-state batteries by 2025 and a production car by 2030.
Mercedes-Benz and Stellantis have invested in Us solid-state battery manufacturer Factorial Energy, and Mercedes-Benz has signed a technical cooperation agreement with Taiwanese solid-state battery company ProLogium to jointly develop next-generation batteries, with an investment of millions of euros, planning to achieve mass production of solid-state batteries in 2028.
It can be seen that almost all international large OEMs are laying out solid-state battery technology routes, through self-research, cooperation or investment, trying to occupy the commanding heights of the next generation of power battery technology, and mastering the pulse of the heart of electric vehicles in their own hands.
Back in China, NIO released a 150kWh "solid-state battery" at nio DAY 2020 and plans to install it on the ET7 model. But this solid-state battery can only be regarded as a semi-solid-state battery, and it is not a true all-solid-state battery. The latest news is that this semi-solid-state battery will be mass-produced as soon as the end of this year.
It is worth noting that Weilan New Energy, a solid-state battery manufacturer that provides this product for WEI, has also recently received investment from Xiaomi and Huawei. Previously, the all-solid-state lithium battery company High Energy Times also announced that it had obtained more than 50 million yuan of A round financing, and Huineng Technology had completed a financing amount of 326 million US dollars, and capital was rapidly pouring into the field of solid-state batteries.
Che Yun Summary:
The all-solid-state battery route is an important direction for the future development of future power batteries, but some technical and manufacturing problems need to be solved before truly large-scale mass production. Judging from the mass production plans announced by some car companies, the time node for all-solid-state batteries to truly be put into large-scale commercial applications should be between 2025 and 2030.