Battery Design Competition

Electric vehicle manufacturers are keen on stuffing as much energy capacity into the vehicle battery as possible.  Lead acid batteries that help start conventional combustion cars have a battery density in the range of 30 to 50 watt hours per kilogram, near the lowest among various battery types.  Only the lithium ion battery gets close to the kind of energy density that makes sense for electric cars.  The energy density of lithium ion batteries ranges from 90 to 190 watt hours per kilogram depending upon the chemistry type. 

The post entitled “The Solid State of Batteries” published on June 14, 2019, described developers’ efforts to beef up lithium ion technology with solid metal electrodes and solid electrolyte to gain energy several orders of magnitude over current lithium ion batteries.  Toyota is among several automotive manufacturers that are investing in solid state battery technologies.  Toyota executives announced in early June 2019, the automaker’s goal to bring a solid state battery powered vehicle to market by 2020.

Toyota and its partners are not the only developers trying to replace the semi-liquid materials used to coat electrodes in conventional lithium ion batteries.  Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Materials and Beam Technology have developed a dry film as an alternative to the electrolyte current used in lithium ion batteries.  While it is often referred to as a ‘liquid’ electrolyte, it is more a semi-liquid paste that requires mixing potentially toxic solvents and then applying heat to dry the paste.    

The Fraunhofer team and its partners have developed a formula for electrolyte with a dry material.  Active materials are mixed with binding polymers in a rolling mill and then laminated the material directly to an aluminum foil that is wound up around an electrode.  The dry mixture and process leads to a more stable material and eliminates the need for expensive, toxic solvents and high-heat processing.  Importantly, the electrolyte is non-flammable.   

Fraunhofer has been working with Broadbit Batteries, a privately-held technology company in Finland.  Broadbit has already tested the dry material electrode in sodium-ion batteries.  The company claims achieving high enough energy density to increase electric vehicle range by 1.5 times at the same cost.  Besides powering vehicles, Broadbit chemical engineers think their batteries have broad applications in engine starters, portable electronics and energy storage.

The Fraunhofer-Broadbit team is not the only group working on dry battery technology.  Maxwell Technologies, now owned by Tesla (TSLA:  Nasdaq), is primarily known for its lines of capacitors.  The Maxwell engineers also know a fair bit about battery density.  The company has developed a dry battery technology that involves mixing conductive and binding agents together than substituting it for the solvents current used to wrap battery electrodes. 

Maxwell’s dry battery electrode technology has said it expects to be ready for volume production by 2023.  However, since the acquisition by Tesla in early 2019, Tesla management has promised it could be as early as 2020.  Maxwell’s technology could boost the Model 3 battery density from the current 272 watt hours per liter to over 300 watt hours per liter.

Of course, Tesla’s often quoted stock is one way to play electric vehicle adoption and the value added by battery technology development.  Now that Maxwell Technologies has been folded into the car company, there is no avenue other than TSLA to invest in its intellectual property.  Broadbit may offer more opportunity for direct stake in dry materials batteries.  The company has raise at least one round of seed financing from private investors.  We expect the company to come back to the capital market again in coming years to get financial support for the commercialization step.

Neither the author of the Small Cap Strategist web log, Crystal Equity Research nor its affiliates have a beneficial interest in the companies mentioned herein.