The electric car?s role in the future is assured by today?s race among General Motors, Hyundai, Nissan, Tesla, and others to advance range and affordability. With a rising number of startup challengers, these automakers agree that winning depends on making the electric car?s engine?its battery pack?cheaper, lighter, smaller, safer, and longer-lasting.
The current lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries have buried previous lead-acid and nickel-metal hydride designs, but there?s fervent interest in alternatives to the Li-ion concept that Exxon, of all entities, patented in 1976.
Earlier this decade, a startup enterprise called Sakti3, working in deep secrecy one building away from Car and Driver?s Ann Arbor, Michigan, headquarters, quietly began touting a solid-state lithium-ion battery that eliminates the normal liquid electrolyte to improve energy density and safety while shortening recharge times and, potentially, lowering manufacturing costs. British inventor and consumer-electronics manufacturer James Dyson was so convinced that his firm bought Sakti3 for more than $100 million in 2015. Various universities, research organizations, and automakers including Toyota also are targeting solid-state manufacturing, where a lithium-ion battery is created layer by layer through vapor deposition?the methodology long used to construct computer chips. At the University of Texas at Austin, research fellow Maria Helena Braga is eager to patent a battery using a solid-glass electrolyte in ...