A solid-state battery is an electrical battery that uses a solid electrolyte for ionic conductions between the electrodes, instead of the liquid or gel polymer electrolytes found in conventional batteries. Solid-state batteries theoretically offer much higher energy density than the typical lithium-ion or lithium polymer batteries.
Solid-state batteries are, for now, still in development. Toyota aims to sell its first EV powered by a solid-state battery before 2030, while several other automakers are working in partnership with battery produces on their own projects.
In November 2023, Solid Power announced that it had produced the first batch of solid-state battery A samples and delivered them to BMW, and according to the schedule, Solid Power will achieve mass production of all-solid-state batteries by 2030.
In recent years, with the vigorous development of the new energy vehicle market, solid-state batteries, as the core of the next generation of power battery technology, are gradually moving from the R&D stage to mass production.
“This is why we started this (solid-state) journey in the first place–so we could use lithium metal,” noted Helena Braga, an associate professor of engineering physics at the University of Porto, in Portugal, and a well-known researcher who worked with Nobel Prize winner John Goodenough on solid-state batteries a decade ago.
Many industry executives agree that solid-state’s constituent technologies will gradually be integrated into today’s batteries. CATL appears to be planning to do exactly that, unveiling in April a new “condensed”, or “semi-solid-state”, battery with double the energy density of current models.