Technology

Better Battery Technology.

We are now hand-building a prototype that should have 600 to 900 Watt-hours per kilogram of capacity. (600 Wh/kg is 2.4 times the capacity of leading lithium ion batteries, and we expect that in production, our battery will be less than half their cost per kilowatt-hour of capacity.)

Early tests indicate a potential in volume production of over 1,200 Watt-hours per kilogram, which is comfortably over NASA’s 700 Watt-hours per kg estimate of the tipping point to go beyond today’s research on hybrid battery aircraft, to full battery electric commercial passenger aircraft (reference: direct communication with head of Small Business Innovation Research for the Aeronautics Division). The capacity may exceed 1,800 Watt-hours per kilogram within a year.

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If it’s good enough for aircraft, it will work for light-, medium- and heavy-duty land and sea vehicles. It will also work for stationary applications, including providing intermittent renewable-source electricity on demand for smart micro-grids and giant grids, wind and solar farms, residential and commercial rooftop (and canopy) solar, and charging the world’s vehicles at night with energy stored during the day.

Technical performance is valuable; it takes long cycle life, safety, abundant materials, and low cost to make it revolutionary. Here is how our battery technology stacks up:

It’s designed for 10,000 charge and discharge cycles, to 85% depth of discharge, with 80% capacity retention after over 27 years, at one cycle per day.
Electrodes and solid-state electrolytes are fired at over 900 degrees C; they won't ignite. Paste electrolyte ingredients could put fires out. The battery is nontoxic.
Most of our ceramic grade (95% pure) commodity raw materials are abundant worldwide and cost less than $2 per kilogram. We don’t use lithium, cobalt, strong acids, or rare earth materials. We can surge as others struggle with shortages in materials supply and production capacity.

We will use a mature, high-volume, very low-cost mass fabrication system to fabricate the electrodes and solid-state electrolytes. We expect to be able to sell for under $100 per kWh of battery capacity, at full volume production – well over 200 Gigawatt-hours (200 million kWh) per year, per plant.