Bit lazy mate.
The very first sentence of the article states:
The US solid-state battery developer announced it has achieved 800 cycles with its battery,
marking significant progress towards commercialization."
I don't need to tell anyone who has been invested in the battery metals space for a while that there is exciting technology always being spruiked with higher energy density, greater safety, faster charging, longer cycle life yada yada.
Invariably, its high on marketing and low on actual commercialisation.
The article has a link to a 2022 piece on ION, which stated they were aiming to produce 10 MWh per year by the end of 2023.
As of today, they have 'broken ground' on their pilot plant!
If you've followed the Tesla story, you'll be aware of their success due to having the manufacturability of the product foremost in mind when designing it. Elon has said designing the factory to build a car - “the machine that builds the machine” was as important as designing the car itself.
My feel for some of Tesla's recent drop in profitability and desirability is the difficulties they've had with their 4680 cell development.
Unveiled at their Sept 2020 Battery Day event, now al most four years later they are still struggling to ramp its production.
Their cell chemistry hasn't really evolved either - the Cybertruck is now shipping with far less range than when first unveiled in Nov 2019, nearly five years ago. Tesla are working though their pre-order list pretty fast, with may people declining the truck, with a large number citing this disparity with range and price as chief reason:
https://electrek.co/2024/08/08/tesla-working-through-giant-cybertruck-backlog-pretty-fast/The Model 3 Highland refresh came with little increase in range which was personally disappointing and stopped me purchasing.
I'd love my EV to have more range, and wish ION all the best, but there are many hurdles to get a new chemistry out of the lab, through piloting and into large scale production. I'd estimate five years for their batteries to start showing up in an EV, which is actually the
third phase of their commercial plan.
And the cost would likely be at the top end, so maybe a further five years until it trickles down into mass market EVs with economies of scale etc.
Plenty of batteries to use a graphite or graphite/silicon based anode in the increasingly electrical Earth in the coming decades.
The planet is going to look like Coruscant, and even the optimists amongst us probably still can't comprehend the staggering quantity of batteries in such a future. RNU looking fine IMO.
