The first major battle to make all-electric vehicles attractive was to increase range, at least to a level that cures range anxiety in motorists. That’s a battle that’s been largely won, although cold weather continues to present a challenge, and no one will sneeze at models that offer even more range in the coming years.
The second battle is being waged at charging stations. Specifically, the challenge is to shorten charging times. While some EV owners are fine with where we are now, many motorists hesitant to jump into the all-electric domain find the times still too long, particularly when traveling longer distances.
This battle will also be won one day, that’s clear. Many manufacturers and suppliers are already working on it and progress has been made in the last couple of years particularly. A potential game-changer is appearing on the horizon, however, and that would be solid state battery technology, which could significantly improve not just range and safety but charging times.
It’s expected that some manufacturers will offer vehicles equipped with solid state batteries before the end of this decade. One such company is fledgling EV maker Mullen, which we know from its Five concept, introduced at the Los Angeles Auto Show last November.
Earlier this week, Mullen said it was developing a solid-state battery cell that could deliver a range of more than 1,000 km from a 150-kWh battery pack. Fast DC charging would also deliver an added 500 km of range in just 18 minutes, the company said.
That's starting to sound interesting, because with that kind of capacity, getting back, say, 100 or 200 km would only take a few minutes.
This isn’t going to happen tomorrow. Mullen doesn't expect to begin testing its solid-state battery until 2025 in a vehicle, a year after it launches the Five SUV on the market. And should the tests prove successful, the technology still wouldn’t find its way into the Five until its second generation.
The big guns are sniffing around the technology as well, but there too the outlook is medium term. The Volkswagen Group has said it wants to introduce the technology after 2025; Nissan is targeting 2028; and BMW and Mercedes-Benz are talking about the end of the decade. The first one to the finish line may be Toyota, which plans to introduce it with a hybrid vehicle as a first step.
While solid-state battery technology is not new, there are obviously big hurdles to its application in the automotive arena, particularly with regard to large-scale battery manufacturing. Still, this smacks of inevitability.