New EV battery technology-cobalt free

Lantus

Some very promising news on cobalt free batteries. This would revolutionise battery adoption and cost for all devices especially cars.

https://www.google.ie/amp/s/venturebeat.com/2019/12/18/ibms-new-cobalt-free-battery-uses-materials-extracted-from-seawater/amp/

VikingG

TITLE - IBM’s new cobalt-free battery uses materials extracted from seawater

TEXT - “The goal would be, within a year or so, to have the first working prototype (of the battery),”

circadian

I've seen over the years reports of seawater and graphite type batteries to move away from using rare-earth metals. It'd be great if we could get away from using materials that need to be shipped around the world and could be produced more locally but I'd imagine that this is a long time off.

...Ghost...

Just another headline i'm afraid. I wouldn't put any water in it until something more solid is produced.

Lantus

...Ghost... wrote: »

Just another headline i'm afraid. I wouldn't put any water in it until something more solid is produced.

It's early days but several years development is relatively short if achieved. It would eliminate the most scarce metal in those units and the horrendous mining that extracts it.

Lumen

LiFePO4 batteries are cobalt free I think.

Bit heavier though.

tom1ie

I thought solid state lithium batteries were the next big thing? Anyone know any more about that?
https://www.navigantresearch.com/news-and-views/is-2020-the-year-of-solid-state-batteries-for-evs
I suppose the problem with solid state batteries is you are still using rare earth materials in the form of lithium, albeit more efficiently.

unkel

tom1ie wrote: »

I suppose the problem with solid state batteries is you are still using rare earth materials in the form of lithium, albeit more efficiently.

Lithium is not a rare earth element.

Orebro

There's a battery breakthrough story every other day at the moment - none of them have made it out of the lab though so we're years away from anything replacing what we have at the moment.

celtic_oz

There's a battery breakthrough story every other day at the moment - none of them have made it out of the lab though so we're years away from anything replacing what we have at the moment.

its just not goodenough

YABB = Yet Another Battery Breakthrough

Lemme know when products are announced that use these batteries. IBM and Mercedes-Benz mentioned may or may not give this some gravity, depending on the motives. Merc would be happy to have an excuse to delay mass production of BEVs (have to wait for these) but IBM are normally reliable enough. Just a bit of a dinosaur these days.

liamog

I often wonder how we track these battery improvements.
We've seen battery density increase by approx 20% per year, and battery cost per kWh decrease at around 8% per year.

Is it not the case, that we're just seeing battery research from 5 years ago hit a commercial scale?
This research is claiming cobalt free batteries, but we've been seeing cobalt reduce over time anyway.

Lumen

This is a decent medium-detail article from April.

https://qz.com/1588236/how-we-get-to-the-next-big-battery-breakthrough/

tom1ie

unkel wrote: »

Lithium is not a rare earth element.

Thanks for pointing that out.

Shefwedfan

IBM is doing this for the patents, they would never bring a product like this to market. Instead they develop something, patent it and then let all the manufacturers build the product while they take a nice cut in the back ground.

See below
“The goal would be, within a year or so, to have the first working prototype (of the battery),” said Jeff Welser, vice president at IBM Research. IBM may not necessarily end up making a product using the design, Welser added.

This is the most important bit. So they have developed the technology, it is ready to be used but they want someone to buy the rights off them and build it. Hence why it will take a year.

IBM is the top patent company in the World. Majority of those patents they never bring to market. Google etc in years gone past have paid millions if not billions to IBM to buy the patents off them.