EV Expert Sandy Munro: Solid State Batteries "Kiss of Death" for Gas Cars

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"Teardown Titan" Sandy Munro went viral for criticizing certain aspects of early Teslas he tore down, with some of those criticisms potentially helping inspire the gigacastings in use today. More recently he's made no secret of his admiration for Tesla's battery and inverter technology, especially in comparison with the myriad other EVs his company has torn down for analysis. Sandy recently shared his thoughts on the state of the EV and battery-tech industries with attendees at the SAE World Congress 2023, and our chief Detroit-bureau nerd was there taking notes.

Munro & Associates has analyzed all the lithium-ion battery packs on the market today and declares the 4680 best of the current breed. Based on patents Tesla purchased from Canadian startup Springpower (for $3!), their chemistry remains NMC with a graphite anode, but a novel dry electrode manufacturing process helped shrink the manufacturing footprint to one-third.

Relative to the 2170 cells it replaces, it packs six times the power, five times the energy, and boosts range by 16 percent.

The Tesla 4680 battery's electrolyte does not qualify as solid state, but it may surprise you (as it did us) that solid-state batteries have been in production vehicles for some time. Don't get excited. Quebec Hydro's Blue Solutions and Bolloré combined their 1,700 lithium-metal-polymer battery patents to form a company called LMP to commercialize fully solid-state batteries. The hitch is, their current design operates at 176 degrees F, so they're currently only used in heavy-duty fitments like busses.

Solid Energy Solutions is at work on a lithium metal battery with a cathode similar to today's batteries, but an anode featuring dry lithium metal affixed to copper or—for ultimate light weight—a titanium mesh that yields superior gravimetric energy density. Sakuu has also demonstrated a 3D printing production process for solid-state lithium metal batteries. And QuantumScape is claiming as much as 400 Wh/kg with its solid-state design.

Ford, Mercedes, Toyota, and VW are all betting big on these room-temperature solid-state batteries. They're hard to scale up for production (Sandy likens it to "trying to glue potato chips together with two-way tape"), but they charge faster, are not flammable, boast 2-8 times the energy density, and typically require no toxic materials.

All of which led Munro to declare: "When these batteries are in production, there will be no comparison between the current technology or anything petroleum based—[solid state] is the kiss of death for gasoline and diesel."

Sodium is vastly more plentiful than lithium, so sodium-ion batteries are certainly attractive from a supply-line standpoint. China's JAC Group has reportedly gone to market with such a pack in its Sehol E10X compact, using batteries supplied by HiNa Battery Technologies—a startup dating to just 2017, and Chinese battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. (CATL) announced it's working with Chery to develop a sodium battery pack for low-cost subcompacts.

This illustrates another point Munro made throughout: The Chinese are exceptionally driven, shortening development times, approval processes, etc. "They all want to work. They all want to be entrepreneurs and they all want to be millionaires—something we used to have here in the States."

CATL announced a revolutionary condensed matter "semi-solid-state" battery with an energy density of 500 Wh/kg that's suitable for electric passenger aircraft (compare with the class-leading Tesla Model S Plaid pack's 186 Wh/kg).

Amprius has reportedly validated a 504 Wh/kg silicon anode battery for the Airbus Zephyr project. Its party trick is bonding lithium nanowires to a silicon base without glue—they just forcibly embed them. Obviously, these batteries are priced for 70,000-foot altitude aircraft, but perhaps with time and production experience the technology will find its way down to earth.

"I think that BYD will probably own about 30% of the [battery production] market share of North America, [because of] their dedication to trying to figure out how to make the absolute best batteries on the planet and their relationship with CATL—far and away the leader in battery technology." Munro backed up that claim with a chart indicating projected production capacity growth between 2020 and 2030. It showed industry leader CATL boosting capacity by 319 percent, LG Energy by 340 percent, and BYD by 524 percent (ending up just about 60 GWh behind LG to remain in third place).