FYI,The future, no doubt, the good news 5 to 10 times the amount...

FYI,

The future, no doubt, the good news 5 to 10 times the amount of lithium required for the same battery pack.

SOLID STATE BATTERY DRAWBACKS AND ROADBLOCKS

All of that sounds great, and it's no wonder there are dozens of startups working on bringing solid-state batteries to market, many with big funding from major OEMs and optimistic projections of product launches by 2025. That may be optimistic, though. Let's look at some of the roadblocks.

Materials Shortages

Although the internal constituents of batteries vary based on construction, lithium is a key factor in most. Globally, lithium prices have tripled in the past year alone, and that's despite global lithium production tripling in just the past five years. There is, quite simply, a global shortage of the stuff.

The problem is that solid-state batteries could actually use even more lithium than today's lithium-ion packs. Remember those higher-density anodes mentioned above? They'll likely be made of pure lithium metal. "Now, lithium metal can increase the specific energy of your battery by up to three times but it comes as pure lithium, which means the lithium intensity is also increased," McNulty said, noting this will exacerbate the lithium shortage.

"It's going to be between five and 10 times the amount of lithium for the same battery," said Dr. Jordan Lindsay, research and innovation manager at Minviro, a U.K. consulting firm that quantifies the environmental impacts of raw material production. "So, if you can nail recycling for that, cool. But if not, we're already projecting difficulties with supply chains for normal lithium-ion, so I have no idea how we resource solid-state."