500 mile range, 10 minute charge
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https://www.wired.com/story/panasonic-powder-powered-silicone-ev-batteries/
A company working with Tesla’s main US battery supplier has silicon-based tech that could soon give electric cars 500-mile ranges and charge refills in just 10 minutes.
Sila, a Californian company cofounded in 2011 by Tesla’s seventh staffer, is going to supply Panasonic with a US-made silicon powder for EV batteries that could banish range anxiety, slash charge times, and even reduce reliance on China.
Panasonic’s main US customer is Tesla, and produces around 10 percent of EV batteries globally. Last year, Sila signed a supply agreement with Mercedes-Benz for its new long-range G-class electric SUV, expected to debut in 2025. (The German automaker led Sila’s Series E funding round in 2019.)
Sila’s Titan Silicon anode powder consists of micrometer-sized particles of nano-structured silicon and replaces graphite in traditional lithium-ion batteries. This switch-out for EVs could soon enable 500-mile nonstop trips and 10-minute recharges. What’s more, the anode swap doesn’t require new manufacturing techniques. The black powder already powers the five-day battery life of the latest Whoop activity-tracking wearable.
“It took us 12 years and 80,000 iterations to get to this point,” said Sila’s cofounder and CEO, Gene Berdichevsky. “It’s sophisticated science.” Berdichevsky started his career at Tesla, becoming the seventh employee in 2004. He was the lead for Tesla’s Roadster battery system, leaving when the company had about 300 employees. After further study, he cofounded Sila with Tesla colleague Alex Jacobs and Gleb Yushin, a materials science professor at Georgia Tech.
Swell New Battery Tech
Compared to graphite, silicon stores up to 10 times more energy, so using silicon instead of graphite for anodes—the part that releases electrons during discharge—can significantly improve a battery’s energy density. However, the material swells during repeated charging, with the resulting cracks radically reducing battery life.
Sila’s technology allows for this expansion by using nanoscale carbon “scaffolding” to keep the silicon in check. “Titan Silicon is a nanocomposite material,” says Berdichevsky. “It’s like raisin bread, where the raisins are the silicon, and there’s the squishy matrix around the raisins with a big outer rind on the particle itself. The rind holds the space, and the bread moves aside when the raisins expand. The scaffold is not holding the silicon—it’s accommodating the expansion.”
The patented scaffolding process involves silicon-derived silane gas infiltrating custom carbon lattices. The resulting micron scale powder is shipped to battery makers.
“We can replace anywhere from 50 to 100 percent of the graphite in lithium-ion batteries,” claims Berdichevsky. A full-fat replacement could deliver a 40 percent increase in mileage for a typical EV, and reduce the wait to 80 percent charge to the time it takes to leisurely fill a tank with gas.
Sila says that Titan Silicon is about five times lighter than graphite and takes up about half the space when fully charged. In a press release announcing the agreement with Sila, Panasonic said it has a goal of increasing the volumetric energy density of its batteries to 1,000 watt-hours per liter by 2030.
“That’s a very high metric,” says Berdichevsky. “The best batteries in the world today are right around 740 watt-hours per liter, and those are the same numbers that solid-state battery developers claim that they can reach. We’re saying we can soon reach those levels with technology [that] is here now.”
Graphite is the world’s default anode material, present in almost every lithium-ion battery and consisting of up to 60 percent of a battery’s volume. According to an International Energy Agency report, about three-quarters of all EV batteries are currently made in China.
Mining consultancy Benchmark Mineral Intelligence estimates that China produces 61 percent of the world’s naturally occurring graphite, and refines 98 percent of finished graphite material.
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I don't believe the 10 minute charge claim. It seems to crop up pretty regularly, and it's always 'soon', but I don't see how you could provide enough current
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@Mik said in 500 mile range, 10 minute charge:
Could be a good step.my understanding is that silicone is plentiful in the world.
Silicon is the world’s second most abundant element in the Earth’s crust (oxygen is the first), and the high-purity quartz used in silane gas production is mined in the US.
