The high price of electric cars is essentially due to the price of batteries. The larger the battery, to offer autonomy, the more expensive it will be.
However, one of China's leading battery makers believes it has stumbled upon a chemistry that will allow it to make even cheaper, more energy-dense batteries.
Gotion High-Tech Co. has just introduced a lithium-iron-manganese-phosphate (LMFP) battery that it claims “can go 1,000 kilometers on each charge.”
There are currently two major standards in the chemistry of electric car batteries, lithium-ion with nickel-cobalt-manganese (NCM) and lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP). The first is the usual one in the European and American industries and the one that grants the most autonomy. It is also the most expensive.
The second is the usual chemistry in the Chinese industry, from BYD to Tesla (which uses it in its entry-level Tesla Model 3s, for example, made in China). It offers somewhat less autonomy, but it is cheaper and thus reduces the manufacturing cost.
In the case of Gotion's new battery, manganese is added to the existing lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) chemistry. "It's an improvement, a leap in energy density," Cheng Qian, executive chairman of Gotion's international business unit, said in an interview with Bloomberg.
Gotion's proposal is not new, but until now the LMFP chemistry has not been used in electric cars for, among other reasons, its low conductivity or even its low energy density. Gotion, however, not only claims to have overcome the problem of energy density, but to have drastically improved it.
Higher energy density and lower price
Thus, while LFP batteries have almost peaked in energy density at 190 Wh/kg, Cheng says, Gotion's new battery could reach 240 Wh/kg. That is, it can store more energy in each battery cell, thus reducing the weight, the size of the pack, and, therefore, the price.
In Gotion they calculate that their LMFP battery would be 5% cheaper than a classic LFP battery and between 20% and 25% cheaper than an NCM lithium-ion battery. The median price of a lithium-ion battery for electric cars was $151 per kWh ($/kWh) in 2022. Gotion's proposal would lower the price of an electric car battery to $113/kWh.
Gotion, which has the Volkswagen Group as its main shareholder, could start mass-producing this new battery, named Astroinno, in the second quarter of next year.
According to its manufacturer, all are advantages. And so far we've seen a lot of new chemistries and research that promise to improve the energy density and/or charge rate of batteries, such as the solid-state or sodium battery.
However, beyond BYD's Blade batteries (rectangular and structural battery cells) and NIO's semi-solid state battery (which is originally due to hit the market this year and is very expensive), there have been no new advances in terms of batteries that have reached the public.
With the promise of mass production in less than two years, it seems to be one of the most realistic proposals, or closest to commercial reality, in any case.
0 Comments