Significant improvements to electric vehicle batteries should eventually be available on the market over the next five years. These long-awaited developments are expected to make gas cars more expensive than their electric counterparts by 2030, some electric vehicles to charge as fast as gas fills up, and the term “range anxiety” to become obsolete due to the advent of extremely long-range EVs.
You might not be aware of these upcoming technological advancements because they have long been eclipsed by more spectacular attempts to replace the current lithium-ion battery technology in EVs completely. Those much-promised “breakthroughs” in battery technology have often fallen short of expectations, leaving investors holding the bag and customers unhappy.
Nearly every one of these upcoming innovations is an improvement over the same well-established lithium batteries that some have threatened to upend. They may be produced in existing facilities and work with existing supply chains, which provides them a significant advantage. This is significant since prior expenditures in battery manufacturing capacity have been so large—more than $30 billion in 2023 alone, according to BloombergNEF—that they have made it more difficult for any technology to be competitive if it cannot be produced in those facilities.
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BMW’s Electric Vehicle Battery Rollout for 2025
Larger increases in battery energy density are uncommon. However, BMW has declared that it will start selling the first car built on its new electric vehicle platform, known as “Neue Klasse,” in 2025. According to a BMW representative, these cars will be equipped with a new type of battery that can store more than 20% more energy than the previous model. The charging speed and range of the battery will also increase by up to 30%. These advancements are made feasible by modifications to the battery cells’ chemistry and a new, cylindrical shape.
2026 will see new battery chemistries
According to Chief Executive Qichao Hu, Massachusetts-based SES AI, a manufacturer of battery components, is on pace to assist manufacturers in delivering vehicles with an extra jump in the energy density of their batteries in 2026.
Working with GM, Hyundai, and Honda, SES AI is already the first firm in the world to supply sophisticated battery prototypes with a specific sort of new technology to a manufacturer. The next generation of SES AI’s cells, which are appropriate for deployment in a fleet of prototype cars, should be available in 2025.
Battery 101
It helps to understand the inner workings of modern batteries in order to appreciate why that matters. An EV battery is typically composed of thin layers, much like a sandwich. First, there is the graphite-based component known as an anode. Liquid electrolyte, similar to Gatorade but containing lithium salts rather than sodium, permeates the entire cell. After that, a thin “separator”—imagine something similar to saran wrap. The cathode, which is the last component, is a mixture of different metals, usually cobalt, nickel, manganese, and lithium.
Lithium ions travel between the anode and the cathode of a battery when it powers a car’s engine through a plastic separator that contains tiny holes that are just large enough for the ions to pass through. Current is produced by the actual movement of those lithium ions from one side of the battery sandwich to the other.
A lithium metal anode has the potential to store ten times as many lithium ions as a graphite one. This implies that a battery that uses lithium metal instead of graphite could have an energy density that is up to 50% higher, all other factors being equal.
According to Hu, this means that manufacturers may eventually provide reasonably priced EVs with a range comparable to that of premium models. Thus, even entry-level EVs might have a 300-mile range between charges. Higher-end electric vehicles with larger batteries have the potential to break existing records for range, surpassing the current record holder’s 500-mile maximum.
SES AI’s batteries can be integrated into current production lines since the lithium metal in them replaces just a single component of the battery cell. There are currently two main battery kinds for electric cars (EVs): one is designed for luxury cars, while the other is meant for more economical cars like Tesla’s Model 3 and the upcoming wave of low-cost Chinese EVs. The lithium metal technology from SES AI functions in both.
High-speed charging by 2028
Not many businesses are making the same bold claims as SES AI about major improvements to batteries in the near future. StoreDot, an Israeli battery firm, is developing revolutionary battery technology that might one day make charging an electric vehicle as quick as stopping at a gas station in a regular car.
VinFast, a Vietnamese electric vehicle manufacturer, BP, Daimler Truck, and Volvo are among StoreDot’s partners and investors. Polestar, a company owned by Geely, will be the first automaker to use StoreDot’s batteries for “ultrafast charging,” the company revealed.
The “Holy Grail” of battery technology—2030 and beyond?
QuantumScape, a publicly traded solid-state battery manufacturer, was briefly the epitome of the 2020–2021 SPAC boom, but its valuation has since suffered. However, according to Tim Holme, chief technology officer of Quantumscape, the company is on schedule to produce its first batteries appropriate for testing in cars by the end of the next year. Automakers will then have to decide how quickly to start using these batteries in new cars.
