Battery Generation

This podcast episode deals with an energy storage technology that is still underestimated in materials science: Hybrid battery supercaps. Supercaps are installed, for example, for regenerative braking (recuperation) in vehicles such as buses, trains, cranes and trains. The powerful energy storage systems are also found in wind turbines. Now, the Estonian company Skeleton Technologies invented a new hybrid form of battery supercaps.

EV sales in India surpassed 150,000 units for the first time in May 2023. An outstanding annual growth of 64% compared to last year 2022. Market observers as well report a sharp rise in electric two-wheeler sales due to national subsidies and an expanding charging infrastructure.

Self-healing materials have the ability to automatically repair damages to themselves without any external diagnosis or intervention. Soon, they could be used in battery electrodes as well! This would impact the entire battery world - since everlasting cells definitely change the business for nearly every manufacturer.

Before purchasing an electric vehicle, all eyes are on the battery: Among first questions concerning range anxiety and charging speed, most people ask how much loss of capacity the battery will suffer over its average useful life. In this podcast, we talk about (the very normal) degradation of batteries, state of health (SOH) measurements and the research of predicting a battery's lifetime.

As supply chains of battery materials are fragile, raw materials are getting expensive. At the same time vast amounts of old done (cobalt-rich) batteries are now useless. That's why battery recycling is getting more and more attention!

Battery research is mainly about the chemistry, physics or mathematic modelling? Wrong! Today, it is often up to engineers whether an electric vehicle can go for more than 1.000 kilometers, charge in 15 minutes... or not! Modules and packs can be constructed in many different ways. Nowadays, automotive OEMs get to choose from hundreds of different parameters to reach a desired battery design.

Current battery cell chemistries mostly rely on lithium. They frequenty consist of nickel and/or cobalt as well. Eventhough these three materials are not considered rare-earth elements, the amount of accessible raw material deposits are limited. Plus, as production volumes of lithium-ion batteries increase (and prices are shocking producers!), battery researchers are seeking for alternative innovative materials.

In Europe, there are multiple companies trying to build up their own charging networks for future EV mobility. The industry has already formed continental-wide alliances consisting of electricity providers who run very different approaches of how to set up the charging infrastructure. Some focus on public fast charging stations at motorways, some on inner city street lights, some on private AC wallboxes.

Our guest answers a couple of fundamental questions an SIBs. Stefano Passerini is a Professor at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the Deputy Director at the Helmholtz Institute Ulm (HIU). He has been researching sodium as a sustainable battery material for more than 10 years.

In our fouth episode of "Battery Generation" we talk to Dr. Doron Myersdorf (StoreDot), an Israeli developer of lithium-ion batteries. StoreDot publically tested an innovative EV battery material in April 2022: A corporate video shows a standard pouch cell's capability of charging 100 miles in 5 minutes, and 200 miles in 10 minutes.

In our third episode of "Battery Generation" we talk to Christofer Haux (Northvolt), a Swedish battery industry respresentative. Northvolt has an ambitious mission: The European battery supplier wants to build lithium-ion batteries more sustainably, more efficiently, sell them for a cheaper price and recycle a large amount of their own products.

In the second episode of "Battery Generation" we talk to Prof. Stefano Passerini, an Italian chemist. He has been researching sodium as a sustainable battery material for more than 10 years now. We asked him to display the possibility of sodium ion batteries (SIBs) replacing nowadays lithium-based energy storage systems in EVs and stationary batteries.

In the first episode of Battery Generation we talk to Prof. Maximilian Fichtner, a German chemist. He is an expert for state of the art battery materials for electromobility. We asked him to display the future battery trends that could lead us all towards a more sustainable emobility.

This podcast is on a mission to find batteries that are powerful, safe, sustainable, long-living, untoxic, as light and small as possible, cheap and easy to recycle. Is that even possible? Let's find out!