Solid state battery market to hit $6bn in 2030: report

Market news | July 31, 2020

By Nick Flaherty

Materials & processes Batteries / Power Supplies

Researchers and battery makers around the world are working hard on the development of reliable solid state battery technology Even with the influence of the Covid-19 pandemic, the potential market size is expected to grow to over $6bn by 2030 as a report by IDTechEx. Solid state battery technology and developments are covered extensively in eeNews Power (see below).

With the potential of excellent safety, simplified battery pack design, and higher energy densities, solid-state batteries became extremely popular around 2015 when Volkswagen took a 5 percent stake in QuantumScape, Dyson acquired Sakti3, Bosch acquired SEEO and Johnson Battery Technologies sold its solid-state batteries to BP: VOLKSWAGEN BETS $100m ON BATTERY STARTUP

More electric vehicle companies joined in as BMW partnered with Solid Power and Ionic Materials worked with Hyundai, although both Bosch and Dyson later abandoned the two companies they acquired in 2015.

Now in 2020, the market researchers see significant interest in solid state battery technology, such as the newly developed solid-state batteries based on argyrodite electrolyte by Samsung and a further $200m investment by Volkswagen on QuantumScape. Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Fisker, Panasonic, Samsung, CATL are also working on solid state battery technology for more reliable, safer electric car power systems.

While the market demand for solid-state battery technology mainly comes from electric vehicles. energy storage system, consumer electronics such as smartphones, tablets, laptops are also its targeting markets and the later may come to fruition ealier than expected says the report.

With most of the companies’ mass-production plans, like Japan ~2025-2030, Europe ~2025-2026, mainland China & Taiwan ~2022-1023, it is likely that solid-state batteries will take off around 2025, although small-scale production may happen even earlier says the report. The car plug in market will take the most share (65%) in 2030, followed by smartphone applications.

Next: Global solid state battery developments

European and US firms are striving to win the race to commercial production. New material selection and change of manufacturing procedures show an indication of the reshuffle of the battery supply chain. From both technology and business point of view, the development of solid-state batteries has become part of the next-generation battery strategy.

In a solid state battery both the electrodes and the electrolytes are solid-state. Solid state electrolyte normally behaves as the separator as well, allowing downscaling due to the elimination of certain components such as the separator and casing. This allows cells to be made thinner, flexible, and contain more energy per unit weight/volume than conventional Li-ion cells with polymer or liquid electrolyte. The removal of liquid electrolytes makes the solid state battery more resistant to changes in temperature and physical damages that occurred during usage and potentiall allows them to handle more charge/discharge cycles before degradation, promising a longer lifetime.

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IDTechEx has identified solid state battery technologies including solid polymer electrolyte, as well as other 8 inorganic electrolyte types such as LISICON-like, argyrodites, garnet, NASICON-like, Perovskite, LiPON, Li-Hydride and Li-Halide. Among them, the material systems based on oxide and sulfide systems stand out, together with the polymer systems, becoming the popular options in the next-generation development. Sulfide electrolytes have advantages of high ionic conductivity, even better than liquid electrolytes, low processing temperature, wide electrochemical stability window, etc.

However, the difficulty of manufacturing and the toxic by-product that can be generated in the process make the commercialization relatively slow. IDTechEx has observed that more companies tend to focus more on the oxide system to reach a shorter time of return. This has also been reflected in the market prediction.

The IDTechEx report is at Solid-State and Polymer Batteries 2020-2030: Technology, Patents, Forecasts, Players