Battery Update Q1 2026

Lately the battery electric world is beginning to look like the combustion one from decades ago. Where you had diesel providing the economical, if slightly underpowered and more smoky, oemph to your intensively used family car. Petrol brought the power and finesse for the sportier rides. You now have NMC batteries in the top specced vehicles bringing ever increasing ranges, high charging speeds and honestly completely over the top power figures. For the more rational buyers LFP is quickly becoming the go-to solution. While not reaching the volumetric and gravimetric energy densities of its more expensive competitor, it has cost and longevity going for it. Not unimportant parameters for an investment as impactful as a car.

The question is if LFP will have a lot of time to enjoy its status as the dominant intelligent solution. Sodium based batteries have been quietly making their way into stationary applications and small electric two-wheeler products, and now they have jumped to the big leagues. Changan and CATL have presented the Nevo A06, with a 45 kwh Sodium-Ion battery in its belly. Sure, the car is also available with two bigger LFP versions with longer ranges, but getting into electric mobility might in the future no longer require Lithium anymore. Just like LFP had some extra aces besides price to compete with NMC, Sodium batteries have a big advantage for colder climates. They hold up much better in extreme cold. Do they carry less energy per kilogram or liter? Certainly, at 175 wh/kg they are at a disadvantage compared to their most common LFP competitors. Just remember however that the first NMC, BMW i3 for example, or LFP batteries, the 2020 Tesla Model 3, clocked in below that number. Seems like it will be a three way fight going forward.

The main roadblock to faster charging times for electric batteries is temperature. Nothing more frustrating than having the theoretical potential to charge your car with hundreds of kilowatt hours of power, as is often the case with the newest EVs, only to find out that their battery is either too cold or too hot. While some cars like the Porsche Taycan fight this depressing dance of hitting the goldilocks zone with some serious battery climate control hardware built into the car, not all vehicles can be equipped with those level of expensive kit. Not to mention that spending energy on heating or cooling is pretty annoying when you should be using it to go places.

That's why some new developments on the battery management front are interesting to keep an eye on. A company in the UK called Hydrohertz has developed a new valve, the Dectravalve, that can control up to four zones of cooling at once without having to duplicate all the plumbing for every zone. With one simple device it can make sure the temperature differences across the battery are much smaller than with a normal cooling plate, or even double cooling plate, design. Given that a battery has to start throttling the charging if even a single cell exceeds a certain temperature, this new evolution could cut the charging time of a standard BEV battery in three. Instead of half an hour you would be on your merry way within ten minutes without causing serious harm to the most expensive part of your car.

As is the case every three months or so when I send out this newsletter, there is bucket load of news on the solid state front. For the moment it certainly looks like the promise of 2027 being the breakthrough year is going to be kept.

Several players have announced racing past project milestones in this super interesting and important race. While QuantumScape opened an automated production line, Factorial was revealed as the partner of Karma Automotive when it launches the production of its Karma Kaveya in 2027. Yes, next year again! While the Kaveya will not be coming off the production line in VW Golf rivaling quantities, Factorial is openly targeting 2029 as the start of volume production.

You can't write about batteries without mentioning CATL, the 300 pound gorilla with almost 40% market share. Media are reporting that they have started up a pilot production line of solid-state batteries with an energy density of 500 wh/kg. At the current rate of progress they should also be able to get the technology into pilot vehicle production programs by.....2027. One indication that they are beginning to eye mass production can be found in their contracts for raw materials, with a $8.4 billion deal for copper wire as the most notable. On the flip side they are also tempering expectations with the news that their best chemistry option, sulfide oxide instead of lithium-ion, is three to five times more expensive.

While you can read above that solid state lithium batteries are gaining traction fast, we should not count the traditional "wet" composition out just yet. Chinese, of course, researchers have succeeded in creating new electrolyte solvents that overcome the constraints of traditional electrolytes. I'm not going to go too deep into the technicalities and pretend I fully understand, but I do understand the potential results. Even if the 700 wh/kg of energy density that the lab heros are predicting is wildly optimistic, it is a huge jump up from the batteries out there today. As a quick comparison the best batteries that are now in volume produced cars are semi-solid designs that breach the 300 wh/kg mark at cell level. Less than half of what the new technology would provide. On top of giving a superior result to current (semi-)solid state solutions, the relatively small change of just the electrolyte will probably have a smaller impact on the existing production processes than building entirely new factories, further increasing the odds that a breakthrough like this can present a positive business case.

If the technology does prove implementable, there is a huge elephant in the room. It could evaporate the potential of the billions of Euros that have gone into the development of solid-state. Even if everything goes perfectly well, we will be into the next decade before solid-state moves out of the low volume premium segment of the market due to the tremendous costs of getting the new technology to mass market price points. If the 700 wh/kg, or three times today's levels, for a much more economic technology holds before then, you will start running into diminishing returns for pushing the boundaries even further. Take the new BMW i3 as an example. You can now get 900 km WLTP range with the current battery technology in its belly, will you pay a big extra margin for getting to 2.000 km without a bathroom break?