Solid-state batteries: A tech revolution solving battery aging

The electric mobility market worldwide is expected to experience significant growth. According to projections its value could expand from USD 279.45 billion in 2021 to USD 1,507.21 billion in 2028, at a CAGR of 27.2% in the same period. Shifting EV economics, rising adoption of automotive electrification, expansion of the EV charging station network, and advancements in infrastructure development have all contributed to the market growth.

For a more comprehensive understanding of the inner workings of solid-state batteries within the mobility ecosystem, here’s an insightful conversation between Guido Quill, Co-founder & MD at ElectricOne Holding, Dr. Sebastian Heinz, Chief Sales Officer at High Performance Battery Holding, and Siddharth Jaiswal, Automotive Practice Head at Netscribes.

Siddharth: To start off, maybe it’s good to have a quick thumbnail about our speakers. So Guido why don’t you give us a quick thumbnail of your journey, your work in SSB space.

Guido: Okay. It’s very short and brief about the last six-seven years about me. I’ve been traveling a lot to India. So I know the Indian market very well. More than 30 years of international experiences. And I met Sebastian more than four years back through a joint business partner. And it was very clear at the very first beginning that talking about this new generation of batteries is quite exciting. I didn’t have to be… frankly I didn’t know much about batteries, but it felt very interesting.

Even more, the gentlemen behind this technology are very humble. They are very serious persons and even the personality is much more interesting for me than the technology itself because technology can be sometimes going in a bad direction but personality you cannot, you should not change. So that was the reason why we are now talking about more than four years about this development, about the transition to one of the biggest countries in the world in the EV space om India. So that was the journey until today.

Siddharth: Great. Would love to hear about you Sebastian if you may.

Sebastian: Yeah. Thank you very much. Sebastian Heinz is my name. I’m accountable at High Performance Battery for sales and operations and business model development. I have been doing that since 2018. Prior to this I’ve been heavily engaged in the ‘Internet of Things’ segment which is very compatible to what we are doing now because everything requires technology and technology requires energy and energy requires buffers. And I started the journey already with the founder and the inventor of our battery technology back in 2012.

And he is based on a very broad experience in basic research already for more than 30 years now. And this has a very profound grounding in our technology and is now ready to scale up. And that’s why I’m very happy for the invitation and to talk about solid-state batteries today. Thank you very much.

Siddharth: Happy to have you both here. And so jumping right into it. What is solid-state batteries? If you could give us a snapshot on what exactly this is and how did you guys,  how did High Performance Batteries think that – “you know what? This is a genuine need to solve the energy storage in the world.”

Sebastian: So this is a very interesting question and I would start very frankly and very precise. What exactly is a solid-state battery? Because to understand solid-state batteries you need to understand what is the difference between lithium ion batteries, for instance, and solid-state batteries.

A battery consists of a negative electrode and a positive electrode and of an electrolyte which is accountable for the transportation of lithium ions within the battery cell. The electrons run out of the battery cell and drive the application level. So in this electrolyte in current lithium ion batteries is liquid and in solid-state batteries it’s solid. That’s the major difference between the two, as you’re talking about solid-state batteries.

Everyone runs, at the moment, after solid-state batteries and tries to invent this based on the experience of lithium ion batteries where three inventors already got the Nobel Prize in chemistry by inventing different parts of a battery. But the same methodology obviously doesn’t apply for solid-state batteries. You need to think about an entire system and this system is very difficult to identify. And we went back in history. It was around 2015 when we had a kind of a penicillium moment, a miracle moment in our history when we figured out that what we were doing was a solid-state battery.

And the root cause for our question was a little different. We were not about to search for a solid-state battery but for a battery which prevents aging and which solves battery aging at the chemical root causes. And the surprising event was that the solution to battery aging turns out to be a solid-state battery. And so there are quite many approaches outside existing on the battery space for solid-state battery ideas and more than 2,900 to put a number to this.

And all of them have severe issues to be producible at industrial scale. And this has a very simple reason. The simple reason is that you need to produce this kind of solid-state electrolyte outside of the battery cell. And this is linked to massive problems in producing the substance, handling the substance at an industrial scale. And then finally within the battery cell to allow for very good movement of the lithium ions. And the difference with us is that we can make use of the same procedures as how to build a lithium ion battery by using liquids.

We also use a liquid and our production of this solid-state electrolyte happens within the battery case throughout the battery production. So we don’t need to do that externally but we do it internally. It’s like a multi-component glue and that’s the clue about solid-state batteries for us. Generally spoken, solid-state batteries are let’s say the next generation technology of batteries and we are very close to market introduction.

Siddharth: That’s quite fascinating. Before I open, Guido, you’ve mentioned the ultimate goal or achievement is solving battery aging. If you could elaborate a bit more for the viewers, what exactly is battery aging and why should the industry be worried about it?

Sebastian: This is a very good question. Thanks for digging into that. I’ll try to do it on a very plain level. Battery aging happens throughout charging and discharging by setting up, building up a surface layer on the negative electrode. And this surface layer increases by using the battery. So each cycle this layer grows thicker and thicker. The problem is the faster you use or the more intense you use the battery, the thicker it grows. And this is irreversible so it stays on the negative electrode. And the ionic conductivity of this substance of the solid-surface layer on the negative electrode is a lot less compared to the original liquid electrolyte in a fresh battery cell. And this has two effects which you are very familiar with.

The first effect is that the formation of this surface layer consumes capacity. So capacity decreases over time. On the other hand, the ionic conductivity, which gets worse by every cycle, increases the internal resistance. And that comes to the point when you have a reduced capacity with an increased internal resistance, which does not allow any longer to run your initial application. And this has caused the end of life of batteries and the starting point for second life concepts.

And the important thing is the shorter first life is, the more batteries you need to power your application, the more resources you need, the more production demand and all which is related to that you need. And the longer the first life is, the less resources you need. And that is why it is so important. Also, if you look at the demand side globally, we came from about 160 gigawatt hours global demand in 2018. And now we are forecasting a demand of more than 2000 gigawatt hours per year by 2030.

This is a very steep development. And if we don’t pay attention to the technology picking for this ramp up, then we fear that we will see technologies emerging, which are really worse for our environment and for everything that we are looking to do positive things by preventing climate change and by allowing for the shift towards renewable energies. And that is why it is so very important, at least to us, to pay very high attention to longevity, to safety, and to sustainability of the battery. And this should be the benchmark for every battery production worldwide – to really allow for a sustainable shift from fossil fuels to renewable energies.

Siddharth: That’s quite a mission to accomplish. And that is the need of the hour, not just in automotive, but across. And on this note, I want to rope in Guido. So, given the importance of solid-state batteries and the way it is destined to solve battery aging, so how do you see this converting into real time use cases on the ground, given your experience in India, which is a booming market right now? Everybody is buzzing about electric mobility, and speaking about batteries and the newfound lithium in the country, and everybody is quite upbeat about it. And where does solid-state fit into this equation?

Guido: Many, many questions, and we can talk many, many hours about it. I’ll make it crisp and short. First of all, we should have a look at this really big, big market. It will be the biggest market for EV in the next couple of decades, for sure. But this transformation is quite, yeah, it’s a challenge, but it’s also an advantage, of course. And India is so big, you are living in India. So we cannot compare India with, for example, Norway, which is running almost 60-70% of all cars, vehicles are electric. Norway has only 5.5 million citizens. So that is not even a quarter of Delhi. So the transition is happening, but it’s different than in other countries, for sure.

And also, we should point out, when people and OEMs started this EV journey, they almost copied everything from China. So they were only assemblers. And that is not good for the quality, for the safety, for the secureness, and of course, for yeah, for the convincing of people going electric, for sure. Now I see the changes coming step by step, that more Indian companies are going deeper in all products. And once this solid-state battery is coming, that will bring a huge advantage in feasibility. Because then, for example, a rickshaw driver, who might be driving electric, he’s not changing his battery in his life. So the feasibility will be tremendous, much better.

Siddharth: Wow, that thought of not changing a battery for your life, for the life cycle of a vehicle. It’s utopia. I mean, it solves n-number of problems that not just India, but globally, that today is hindering electric mobility, the range anxiety, the charge, the kilometers per charge. So, the infrastructure issues. So essentially, I want to loop in Sebastian here. So from a supply side, there is no doubt about SSB being a game changer, but how ready is the industry? How feasible and sustainable is this a solution for an OEM to consider today?

Sebastian: Well, the industry, I think, especially if you are talking about OEMs for mobility, they have heavily invested in lithium ion batteries. And so that is why I believe that they first of all start to scale up their, let’s say, old fashioned lithium ion batteries. Because they also don’t have this in their mind, the problem of aging that far ahead in their minds. They come with a very simple equation.

They say, if a kilometer range of battery is about 1000 kilometers, and the cycle life is 1000 cycles, then you can run this car 1 million kilometers. This is fully sufficient if you compare this to an internal combustion engine. But that is not the question. The question is whether we have buffers which are really feasible to support energy transition. And the stationary application for this is a lot higher in terms of demand.

So the life cycle demand is a lot higher in stationary applications compared to mobile applications from the thoughts of the people who are driving the car. So there is a lot of demand for the technology. And we need to come into the play when we say we don’t build (like) the short living dangerous batteries any longer, because we want to allow for longer living batteries, longer life batteries with safety issues and environmental issues.

But I think that the OEM structure for mobility is maybe the last field to be really convinced by sustainable batteries, even though we had done the testing for our battery size.We have a size of 13 by 70 by 2.5 centimeters. And the module comes with eight battery cells per prismatic battery cells in one module. And we did the calculation for EVs for electric cars to just answer the question “Would we fit into that?” And yes, we would. So the question is not, are we ready or is the industry ready? But what is the main driver?

And I think that some of the official processes such as regulation and all this will have a significant role to play towards shifting that industry from the simple price issue, price per kilowatt hour to what the total cost of these environmental issues are related to this topic. And just let me point out one thing in that constellation.

If you think about cobalt, this is all but a good resource. And if you need cobalt for high energy density, and if you just go for this segment, then it’s a very big exploitation if you just take into account what is the demand side of this technology. And you can’t scale up technologies like this, you need to pay attention for sustainability, longevity and for safety. This is the major restriction for these scenarios to become real.

Siddharth: Right. As an extension to this, you’ve got a very important and very interesting topic on overall cost of ownership, the concept of cost of sustainability, cost of environment as well. So if you could tell us a bit on a comparison terms, if I say lithium ion versus hydrogen versus solid-state batteries, how would these stack up in terms of not just the value provided to the end consumer, but also on a sustainable level, on a very… in the environment terms, but also from the industry standpoint.

So because, yes, we all want to have a sustainable environment, but it should match the economics as well. So if you could elaborate a bit more on the comparison front, that would be great.

Sebastian: Yeah, very good. So I would divide your question into two parts. The initial part is the comparison between lithium ion batteries and solid-state batteries. And the second part would be the comparison to hydrogen, which, by the way, I love. So just to mention that at first. So it’s not me being just a battery believer, but I think that the technology mix will be the important part and not just one single technology.

So the comparison between lithium ion batteries and the solid-state batteries, as at least from our point of view, for our solid-state battery concept, is that we have a better environmental balance compared to lithium ion batteries. So we have just 50 percent of the impact compared to lithium ion batteries. And there’s one very important measure to be taken into account. It is the number of kilowatt hours taken out of the buffer technology.

So it’s not just producing the battery itself. It is the entire life cycle. So what kilowatt hour do you put in and how many kilowatt hours do you get out? And what is the total impact for each kilowatt hour you take out of the battery system? Because this is the only number where you can really compare different technologies by their different impacts. And so are the ingredients, longevity, and all the aspects around the terms of when do you need to replace batteries due to battery aging.

So if you have a battery which lasts like 5,000 cycles and you have the same features with a battery which lasts 1,000 cycles, then you need for the same application five times the battery numbers compared to the other technology. And this has also to be taken into account. So the entire environmental and economical impact is depending on the feature set of the batteries.

If you have fast chargeability and if you have deep dischargeability, for instance, then you can run the battery with the same power. If you want to have, for instance, like you have a 2C, let’s say, the power, you can take out the power with half an hour of charging and discharging, or you can run the same application with the same battery with just hourly charging and discharging. For the same power, for the same performance, you need double the size of batteries.

And this is what people don’t usually don’t know. They compare kilowatt hours by kilowatt hours, but they don’t pay attention to the entire set. And this is decisive for the entire evaluation of the economics and of the environmental impact. And so if you can combine multi-use on the same battery infrastructure, then you just need the same infrastructure with the same battery for multiple cases. This increases the number of cycles.

So if you have short living batteries, you need more batteries to serve the same component. If you have one single battery, which can simply increase the number of cycles, but not the size of batteries, then you can make a lot more use compared to every other battery. That is why it is so important to solve the battery aging part, to pay attention to safety, because you don’t want to have a flammable battery storage in your house, for instance, and to environmental issues.

So it’s the combination. That’s my major point. You can’t compare technologies on a very simple level. I’m sorry to be explicit in that context. It’s complex, but if you have understood the complexity, you find easy solutions. This is a very simple manner. And if you compare this to hydrogen, then you have the conversion from wind and solar to hydrogen, which has a very small energy efficiency compared to the storage in batteries.

On the other hand, you have a very high energy density of hydrogen compared to batteries. So if you come from the application level, if you have heavy transportation, for instance, then you can benefit from hydrogen rather compared to batteries in lorries. And so you need to really think about the best technology for each application. And it comes to a very interesting point when you come to hydrogen.

Not many people know about this, but the electrolysis of hydrogen is a process which operates best in an optimum between zero and 100% power of the machine, or the electrolyzer. And if you want to prolong this corridor, you would need to even out the peaks and the lows of the energy production of the renewable source.

And you can do this by just implementing batteries, because you can take out the peaks beneath and above the optimum and prolong the duration of the hydrogen production within this time frame. And that leads to a proportion where you can benefit from three megawatt hours of battery buffer for a production of 100,000 tons of hydrogen.

And that’s what I call the marriage of two superior technologies. And if we go this path, then we can make the most out of the production producibility by wind and solar, because as of today, we only use a very small part of the real production generation power we have. And if we combine the right technologies, it is a huge chance for all of us

Siddharth: Well, that’s really fascinating. And I really love the way you’ve compared each technology on its own merit, which often we kind of try to find simple comparisons and miss out on the wider picture. In this regard, I would open Guido here. So here, solid-state batteries is again, like Sebastian mentioned, multiple technologies, everybody’s evaluating, everybody’s betting on one technology or the other, or people, they’re smart people who are looking at it as a combination for a proper solution. But solid-state has typically been largely focused either in Japan, in Europe, a fair bit in North America. Now, you have seen in India, the Electric One is a success story. It revolutionized multi-brand retail, which was unheard of in India before Electric One. How do you see SSBs growth or introduction or does, for that matter, the usefulness of SSB placed in the Indian context?

Guido: That’s a very interesting question. I think the world is always driving technology. And I give you some, maybe two examples. The first one was 16 years back, on the 9th of January 2007. The CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs, represented the first iPhone, iPhone 1. At this date, Nokia, a Finnish company, got more than 40% of market share. Not one of the experts in the world said we don’t need this new iPhone. This is rubbish. This is not useful. Today, Apple is making revenues of USD 80 billion only with software, iTunes, iCloud.

No one could even imagine 16 years back about these revenue screens, no one in the world. So you see, new technology will be going in new directions. And I remember the word of the Tesla owner, “Tesla is not an automobile company, but a software company.” So I see the same strains here in this field.

So again, can you imagine a better way of running 2030, 50, maybe even longer, more and new business cases coming up for sure. And I believe that it will be the best case for India because it will save money, money for other things, for good food, for good accommodations, for education for people.

And can you imagine this e-rickshaw driver has some money for the education of his daughter? And this daughter is going to university. And this daughter going to the university will get the next Nobel Prize because she got the chance to go to university only because her father could spend money not spending every three, four years on new batteries.

This is fantastic. And these stories will come up more and more. So I’m very convinced about the future. it’s not the way when and how much it’s not this question. It’s when India will start to produce its own cells for its own value chain. This is important.

Siddharth: Understood. So as an extension to that, given you’ve closely seen the electric two-wheeler evolve in India. Still, there are a lot of challenges in terms of consumer awareness and confidence. So I always keep saying that, you know, the gasoline ice engines, it took them 120 years to build that consumer confidence. And everybody in electric mobility is in a hurry to do that in two years. Right? So that kind of gives a lot of responsibility to the industry to not break that trust and confidence of the consumer. Right? We’ve already seen a lot many incidents of EVs failing, EVs catching fire. In this context, in fact, this is a question for both of you: from an end consumer standpoint,  how will I benefit from SSB? And what is the true value of how will I gain that confidence that I choose? I, at least the consumer figures out on his own that, you know, SSB is a better tech for me. It suits my lifestyle, my mobility requirements. So how are we going to get there?

Sebastian: I might start with this because it’s a very interesting question. And the initial benefit for every consumer of solid-state batteries, at least of the technology we are offering as well, is safety. If you choose safety first, then you can’t really go with current lithium ion batteries because due to the aging processes, you have additional risks such as flammability and the risk of explosion. And the solid-state electrolyte we are using is a non flammable, and non explosive substance.

So you have an intrinsic safety. This is I would say for the application, mobility, and especially if you are talking about two wheelers and three wheelers, they are all stored close to your house and even home storage. They have the same problem. If you fear every day that your battery could burn, then it’s a very, very tough risk which you have to deal with. And I think that if you are talking about convincing for the journey, safety comes first.

On the other hand, I think the latest since Corona, we all have experience and I found one story from India very, very good. Then you had the lockdown, like for a couple of weeks, people who were 200 kilometers away from the Himalaya region, they could see the Himalaya again, they could see it. And so they started valuing a clean environment. And I think especially in India, this is a kind of development where India doesn’t want to be like the dustbin of others producing bad technologies with bad standards and all this, but they also want to have a clean environment and a nice living.

So environmental friendliness is a very high issue to my personal opinion also in India, which especially deals with the features of a battery. You have the deep dischargeability and the fast chargeability, which is a very good example, also allowing for smaller batteries. We call this the right sizing of batteries.

You don’t need the biggest battery ever. You need the right size for the battery for the application you want to run with it. The smaller, the better. And if you have this combination of deep discharge ability and fast chargeability, we are talking about the third component, which is comfort. And comfort is the other one, which is the third angle, which is really important to users for adopting the technology. Because if you take ages to charge your battery, it’s a very bad comfort. But as explained in the very introduction, fast charging increases aging and increases the associated risks with fast charging. So like flammability and explosion risks.

So you need to prevent fast charging at the battery cell level. What is the current answer from lithium ion battery producers? They increase the battery size because fast charging in a very small corridor of about 40 to 60 percent state of charge is not harmful for batteries, but above and below. And you might have already collected the experience that if you do fast charging and you try to charge your car from, let’s say, 0 to 100, there’s a corridor where it is really quick and the others are very slow.

So you’re in an optimum underway if you do like part charging. And if you run batteries with a deep dischargeability from zero to 100 percent and a fast chargeability, then this battery can be smaller compared to the other one because the corridor is 100 percent and not just the middle. And to put it very plain and talking about the example we had already, like the 1000 kilometers with 1000 cycles, if you just take the longevity into account and you say, well, this battery could work for 2500 cycles, then your battery could be in the size for the range for 400 kilometers and you still have one million kilometers, but a lot smaller battery.

This is only convincible if you have fast charging and deep dischargeability, because after 400 kilometers, at least in Germany, you need to make a stop anyway. And if that’s a quick stop, no one cares. And this is the combination which I think is the paving ground to really pave the road for adoption of this new technology of battery technology.

Guido: Interesting, Siddharth, you mentioned that India has found reserves of six million tons of lithium. That’s a very good message. For example, you need for one production of one kilowatt hour, you need 150 grams. That means India can produce 40,000 gigawatt of production in the next couple of years or 100 years. But they should also mention resource management. That doesn’t mean they can use this lithium as much as possible and big products.

They should take care because no one will know what will happen in 50 or 100 years. Maybe then lithium will be needed for other technologies also. So it’s a great message. India can become one of the biggest players also in battery cell manufacturing, for sure. And I’m looking very promising in the future, because I feel very humble with these gentlemen with this new technology that it will be great for. It will be a win-win-win situation for everyone.

Sebastian: And I would like to add to this what Guido just said, because you mentioned earlier that the big battery producing countries are Japan, China, Europe and America. We go a different path, because we say we strongly believe in local markets and local production. And this is to me also another convincing point if you look to local markets about the acceptance of those products.

If you have to import everything from China, you’re dependent on China. If you need to import this, we experience that quite a bit, quite heavily at the moment from the Russian gas. So this is a kind of criticality. And if you want to overcome criticality and if you have just found resources such as Guido mentioned and as you mentioned in terms of lithium reserves in India, then everything is about to produce your products for your local market locally.

And I think who else has a better chance and starting point compared to India? You have the biggest economy, you have the biggest people and the biggest markets to serve your own batteries. And the value chain is left to the people on the local level. And that is why we deal with our battery technology in a licensing model, where we license our technology to partners who can really address the local market successfully.

And that is why we rely on Guido and his company to really run this market in India based on trust and based on speed. So and this will benefit all of us if we do and if we allow for local productions. And if you want to figure this out, that is what we really mean what we say, you find current battery technologies basically in the patent area, the patent arena, they apply for the seven most producing countries regularly. We did the opposite way. We applied for patents in almost 100 countries worldwide, so that we can effectively allow for local licensing and technology transfer to the countries where the battery demand originated.

No one can claim for this kind of demand explosion that he will be able to serve the world’s demand in one single country. That is why we allow for local production with local distribution paths. And this also pays off in the eco environmental balance.

Siddharth: That’s quite interesting. And it’s a very novel approach. And I’m very happy with your thought process there. And as an extension to this, so if you could elaborate the wider approach and direction for high performance batteries, and we’ve understood that you’ve kind of cracked the code for solid-state battery, and congratulations to you on that. And what is your perspective and direction on the future next steps for scaling SSP soon and pushing it where it is needed the most?

Sebastian: Thank you very much for that question and the compliment. We have already planned the design for the production lines for 400 megawatt hours per line. And we have linked with our partners to really be able to scale this production up. So based on the license agreement, we allow for our partners that they can serve our licensees with the regular equipment which you need. And the speeding time is heavily dependent on our unique chance that we can make use of production procedures with a well known from the production of current lithium ion batteries.

So we have the entire production line, which is fairly similar. And at the end, we fill a liquid into the battery cell. And after that, the chemical reaction starts within the battery cell and X factory, we have a solid-state battery. This is the major accelerator for speed. And of course, the unique development of the production line, we have some specifics in the production procedure. But we have outlined that with all our partners, which we need, it’s basically four major partners we need for this, they can scale up worldwide.
So, that is why we’re very confident that we can also scale up worldwide. And it’s just a matter of cooperation. And that’s the basis of our business model, we don’t just sell, we cooperate. And this is the major difference to, I would say most of the companies, they always strive to increase the fastest possible. Now we need to have an ecosystem which can serve this. And so some of the licensees will overproduce their own demand and serve other licensees of ours who can’t afford their own battery production because the market might be too small or the size differs or they have a specific skill set. So, that is the path we want to scale up.

So, allow people to participate in the technology in local markets based on local licenses, allow for international scaling up of the battery production lines, based on partners which already do this and can provide this. And then finally, to really share this technology in the areas we see. And just to give you that information, we already have licensees for Germany and Austria for kind of energy applications.

We have a partner licensee for Switzerland for industry buffers and energy applications. We have for India, Guido with the license for two wheelers, three wheelers and for charging infrastructure and home buffers. And we have for instance for charging infrastructure and home buffers also in Scandinavia, in Benelux and in the Dachau region like Germany, Austria, Switzerland, already licenses in place. And that’s why we are ready to produce the battery technology and it’s now a game of the partner interplay how to really speed this up.

Siddharth: Excellent. That’s a brilliant roadmap. Roping in Guido here on your perspective on the Indian direction and roadmap.

Guido: Well, then it’s a question of awareness. For example, for example, Tata sold 200,000 cars in India last year. If they want to change it in electric cars, let’s say they need 50 kilowatt hours per car. Only Tata, they need a production line of 10 gigawatt every year to sell only 200,000 vehicles. I have read some article that Tata is going ahead in the world market. So there’s a lot of space. But that means India, that is my perspective, at least 100, 150, maybe 200 gigawatt of capacity of production is needed. And then we are not talking about solar, buffer, wind buffer. So that is a journey. And again, it’s not a question of volume, it’s a question of the starting point. And time is running, technology is there. We are ready to make it happen. All the partners and our partner who are providing all the machines are ready. So we are ready and we take off.