The Two Bit Da Vinci YouTube channel has a good video on solid state battery fundamentals and a deep dive into a battery company (ProLogium) that has demonstrated manufacturing at scale.
Solid state batteries come in several flavours. Most of them don't stop dendrites.
The flavour you want is polymer, single ion conducting solid state with an ion transport activation energy below 10kJ/mol at room temperature and no phase transitions from -40C to 80C.
I can - it’s called a bomb. Some of the problems with batteries are heat dissipation (one of those problems that superconductors would mostly solve), fire safety, and end of life disposal. Higher energy density makes it even worse.
A good place to start would be a BMS on individual cells that monitors them for general degradation, unexpected discharge, unexpected temperature changes, and can remove a failing cell from the array.
Gasoline has 10x the energy (MJ/Kg) than TNT, but it's not a "bomb". Being a "bomb" is about energy release rate. A battery is still controlled by its chemistry.
Liquid gasoline does not have anywhere near the energy of TNT, or even a battery for that matter. It contains basically zero releasable energy. It needs oxygen or another oxidizer to react with to actually release any energy. TNT and batteries' energy density calculations include the oxidizer and the oxidizer is in close proximity to the fuel (molecularly so in the case of TNT). If you 10x the "energy content" of gasoline it's still rate limited by access to oxygen. If you 10x the energy density of a battery (the type with the oxidizer contained within the battery, not a fuel cell or metal air battery) you've got 10x the energy ready to be released quickly if oxidizer and fuel mix in unfortunate ways
One of the problems with gasoline is its explosive nature, which the fuel storage and delivery system of a car attempts to mitigate. It has a better profile for burning off than a battery though since it will spill out and burn away from the vehicle.
Tesla has been around for nearly 20 years. Model S (12 years) has gained 17% of range due to chemistry (rest is system efficiency and simply bigger battery).
I think, apart from finding better Batteries altoghether, we should build multi-tier batteries inspired by biology.
Humans have bloodsugar, sugar in the Liver and then fat. All of them have their respective properties with availability and amount. This way, engineering tradeoffs could be allocated much more fine grained.
For example, a while ago I read about a startup building an energy storage where they heat up large amounts of sand to store the surplus of renewables. This could serve analogous to the fat in humans.
I don't think 10x density is possible without getting into nuclear, at least not with the chemistries we know of today, everything at a certain point becomes an explosive.
Speaking of nuclear, getting tons of the material that powers mars rovers and putting them in every home would generate enough power for decades... At the cost of being able to build a nuclear bomb in a garage.
I seem to remember recent advances in TMSR research and construction. Those tend to e much safer and have safer byproducts than uranium or plutonium fueled water-cooled reactors.
The next revolution will be small scale generation. Fuel cells, extremely efficient cheap solar, even smaller modular reactors, etc.
I live in western Pennsylvania and have both natural gas and electric service, a roof and 1/3 acre of land to utilize. I would love to get rid of at least one of my utility bills and I’m becoming more interested in decoupling from the electric grid than natural gas service. I dream of a future where competition comes to monopoly utilities by way of direct competition with each other as there is a not so far off future where I can utilize solar, batteries and a natural gas fuel cell to cut ties with my Electric Utility. If that kind of competition can exist then the game is on for those utilities to start fighting for customers.
Agreed, but I think people can imagine and companies are very motivated: powertools, phones, laptops, watches, backup UPS, cars, hospital equipment... there's high demand for durable, long-lasting batteries. I think the research is there, it's just complex chemistry. We'll get there. Impressive to see the progress in EV batteries and they've actually turned out to be more durable than first feared.
I think people can imagine lighter cars and laptops and things. Is there something bizarre that’s unlocked like battery powered space launches or something?
The article gives the technical reasons that answer the headline question (e.g. potential for better energy density)
I am surprised they didn't point out the literal "killer app" - military drones. Energy density is king for any airborne power source. And dendrite growth during charge/discharge cycling isn't as big a deal for that application (how many times would you need to charge a disposable weapon?)
Less weight (all else being equal) is the same thing as more battery for drones. I.e. better range, payload mass, and/or flight time. You probably want both cheap and poor performing as well as expensive and high performing available.
Depends on the battle but yes. Even then the range is usually at least 10 km and starts to be limited by the size of the spool you're going to carry on the drone (though dealing with general cable issues over the distance is one of the reasons this type can't be used for everything).
Aren't sodium batteries close to production and a lot cheaper and safer?
Ambri was working on large scale batteries which seemed like a pretty good idea (looks like they ran out of money): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambri_Inc.
Depends on the application - each battery technology has a trade-off between energy density, cost, lifetime, safety, scalability, etc. Sodium may have a place in grid storage, although iron-air is being deployed today and is even cheaper and safer (but poor energy density, which doesn't matter much for grid storage - https://formenergy.com/technology/battery-technology/)
The energy density scatter plot is physically correct but misleading and everyone makes this mistake.
From an engineering point of view you have to use work delivered at the end of the drive train not fuel raw energy content.
When you do that lithium ion batteries compare more favorably to liquid fuels. That’s because the conversion path is more than 90% efficient. For ICE engines you’re starting with only 20-40% Carnot efficiency (depending on how good and in good shape the engine is) and then losing in the transmission and then losing more because ICE cars have more other gears and moving parts. Power to wheel is pretty terrible. Most of the energy from gasoline heats the air around the car.
This is also why you get outrageous sounding but accurate things like: an EV charged on 100% coal fired electricity emits less carbon than a typical gasoline car. The fact that coal is literal pure carbon fuel is made up for by the high thermal efficiency of a giant supercritical steam turbine vs a small piston engine. Coal burns real hot too (steeper thermal gradient). So more of the energy from coal ends up doing actual work vs heating the air. (Well directly heating the air I mean.)
Yes, electricity should be the only abstraction layer to deliver energy to end user. We can extract a lot more energy from fossil fuels in large scale plants and also continuously switch out dirtier fuels with clean energy.
For example, no need to build natural gas infrastructure to every home. Use induction stoves (or electric coil -- already 67% of homes). Heat pump water heater instead of gas. And heat pump for HVAC.
If all energy bills are consolidated as electricity (instead of gas, natural gas and electricity), most people would install solar on their rooftops, buy EVs, and save ~$1000/month on energy bills.
> We can extract a lot more energy from fossil fuels in large scale plants
This isn't true at all for natural gas. Burning it for heat in the home is much more efficient than burning it in a plant, converting it to electricity, transferring that electricity, then turning that electricity into heat.
There are a number of reasons why lithium batteries may catastrophically fail and catch fire. Dendrite shorts is one, another reason is poor alignment of the layers during assembly, allowing for eventual shifting of layers leading to internal shorting. Another is conductive or sharp debris getting into the battery during manufacturing, and after a while the anode/cathode separator getting pierced by the debris. Lots of reasons!
have I misread or 3/4 of the article explained what a battery is and only final tiny part got to "short-circuiting dendrites don't happen without electrolite"?
The Two Bit Da Vinci YouTube channel has a good video on solid state battery fundamentals and a deep dive into a battery company (ProLogium) that has demonstrated manufacturing at scale.
https://youtu.be/xQFVIs4leig?si=iOOt5gg_2MJAIoFR
Solid state batteries come in several flavours. Most of them don't stop dendrites.
The flavour you want is polymer, single ion conducting solid state with an ion transport activation energy below 10kJ/mol at room temperature and no phase transitions from -40C to 80C.
That is the holy grail of SS batteries.
[delayed]
We need way more research on batteries. People cant ingine what is possible if we make battery 10x energy dense.
I can - it’s called a bomb. Some of the problems with batteries are heat dissipation (one of those problems that superconductors would mostly solve), fire safety, and end of life disposal. Higher energy density makes it even worse.
A good place to start would be a BMS on individual cells that monitors them for general degradation, unexpected discharge, unexpected temperature changes, and can remove a failing cell from the array.
Gasoline has 10x the energy (MJ/Kg) than TNT, but it's not a "bomb". Being a "bomb" is about energy release rate. A battery is still controlled by its chemistry.
Liquid gasoline does not have anywhere near the energy of TNT, or even a battery for that matter. It contains basically zero releasable energy. It needs oxygen or another oxidizer to react with to actually release any energy. TNT and batteries' energy density calculations include the oxidizer and the oxidizer is in close proximity to the fuel (molecularly so in the case of TNT). If you 10x the "energy content" of gasoline it's still rate limited by access to oxygen. If you 10x the energy density of a battery (the type with the oxidizer contained within the battery, not a fuel cell or metal air battery) you've got 10x the energy ready to be released quickly if oxidizer and fuel mix in unfortunate ways
One of the problems with gasoline is its explosive nature, which the fuel storage and delivery system of a car attempts to mitigate. It has a better profile for burning off than a battery though since it will spill out and burn away from the vehicle.
The past 20 years have made lithium ion 2-3x more dense, both because of some chemistry changes and because of better pack level design.
And it's still improving at about 5% per year.
Tesla has been around for nearly 20 years. Model S (12 years) has gained 17% of range due to chemistry (rest is system efficiency and simply bigger battery).
Range is not a real issue for electric cars. Charging time is, though, and there are massive improvements happening for that right now.
The article says $4B was put into solid state research/companies as of 2025 in the US alone. Seems like they are working on it
I think, apart from finding better Batteries altoghether, we should build multi-tier batteries inspired by biology. Humans have bloodsugar, sugar in the Liver and then fat. All of them have their respective properties with availability and amount. This way, engineering tradeoffs could be allocated much more fine grained. For example, a while ago I read about a startup building an energy storage where they heat up large amounts of sand to store the surplus of renewables. This could serve analogous to the fat in humans.
I don't think 10x density is possible without getting into nuclear, at least not with the chemistries we know of today, everything at a certain point becomes an explosive.
Speaking of nuclear, getting tons of the material that powers mars rovers and putting them in every home would generate enough power for decades... At the cost of being able to build a nuclear bomb in a garage.
I seem to remember recent advances in TMSR research and construction. Those tend to e much safer and have safer byproducts than uranium or plutonium fueled water-cooled reactors.
The next revolution will be small scale generation. Fuel cells, extremely efficient cheap solar, even smaller modular reactors, etc.
I live in western Pennsylvania and have both natural gas and electric service, a roof and 1/3 acre of land to utilize. I would love to get rid of at least one of my utility bills and I’m becoming more interested in decoupling from the electric grid than natural gas service. I dream of a future where competition comes to monopoly utilities by way of direct competition with each other as there is a not so far off future where I can utilize solar, batteries and a natural gas fuel cell to cut ties with my Electric Utility. If that kind of competition can exist then the game is on for those utilities to start fighting for customers.
Agreed, but I think people can imagine and companies are very motivated: powertools, phones, laptops, watches, backup UPS, cars, hospital equipment... there's high demand for durable, long-lasting batteries. I think the research is there, it's just complex chemistry. We'll get there. Impressive to see the progress in EV batteries and they've actually turned out to be more durable than first feared.
I think people can imagine lighter cars and laptops and things. Is there something bizarre that’s unlocked like battery powered space launches or something?
The article gives the technical reasons that answer the headline question (e.g. potential for better energy density)
I am surprised they didn't point out the literal "killer app" - military drones. Energy density is king for any airborne power source. And dendrite growth during charge/discharge cycling isn't as big a deal for that application (how many times would you need to charge a disposable weapon?)
If the thing is going to blow up anyway, does it need to be light? Wouldn't you rather have more cheaper drones?
Less weight (all else being equal) is the same thing as more battery for drones. I.e. better range, payload mass, and/or flight time. You probably want both cheap and poor performing as well as expensive and high performing available.
In current battle conditions isn’t the range primarily determined by the size of the fiber optic spool attached to the drone than battery capacity?
Depends on the battle but yes. Even then the range is usually at least 10 km and starts to be limited by the size of the spool you're going to carry on the drone (though dealing with general cable issues over the distance is one of the reasons this type can't be used for everything).
if it’s the same range for less weight you have more room for munitions and other gadgets
Aren't sodium batteries close to production and a lot cheaper and safer?
Ambri was working on large scale batteries which seemed like a pretty good idea (looks like they ran out of money): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambri_Inc.
Depends on the application - each battery technology has a trade-off between energy density, cost, lifetime, safety, scalability, etc. Sodium may have a place in grid storage, although iron-air is being deployed today and is even cheaper and safer (but poor energy density, which doesn't matter much for grid storage - https://formenergy.com/technology/battery-technology/)
Cheaper yes. Non-aqueous sodium ion batteries (which are most of them) are more dangerous than LiFePO4 though.
In what way, if you don't mind me asking?
fun fact: there is already a Sodium-battery with a solid electrolyte - but the operating temperature is above 300^C [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium%E2%80%93sulfur_battery
Tangential to the main article point but…
The energy density scatter plot is physically correct but misleading and everyone makes this mistake.
From an engineering point of view you have to use work delivered at the end of the drive train not fuel raw energy content.
When you do that lithium ion batteries compare more favorably to liquid fuels. That’s because the conversion path is more than 90% efficient. For ICE engines you’re starting with only 20-40% Carnot efficiency (depending on how good and in good shape the engine is) and then losing in the transmission and then losing more because ICE cars have more other gears and moving parts. Power to wheel is pretty terrible. Most of the energy from gasoline heats the air around the car.
This is also why you get outrageous sounding but accurate things like: an EV charged on 100% coal fired electricity emits less carbon than a typical gasoline car. The fact that coal is literal pure carbon fuel is made up for by the high thermal efficiency of a giant supercritical steam turbine vs a small piston engine. Coal burns real hot too (steeper thermal gradient). So more of the energy from coal ends up doing actual work vs heating the air. (Well directly heating the air I mean.)
Yes, electricity should be the only abstraction layer to deliver energy to end user. We can extract a lot more energy from fossil fuels in large scale plants and also continuously switch out dirtier fuels with clean energy.
For example, no need to build natural gas infrastructure to every home. Use induction stoves (or electric coil -- already 67% of homes). Heat pump water heater instead of gas. And heat pump for HVAC.
If all energy bills are consolidated as electricity (instead of gas, natural gas and electricity), most people would install solar on their rooftops, buy EVs, and save ~$1000/month on energy bills.
> We can extract a lot more energy from fossil fuels in large scale plants
This isn't true at all for natural gas. Burning it for heat in the home is much more efficient than burning it in a plant, converting it to electricity, transferring that electricity, then turning that electricity into heat.
That is false. Heat pumps are more efficient than burning gas in a home even when the electricity came from burning gas.
are dendrites why so many people are now burning down their apartment/complex charging their scooters
is LiFePo4 immune to dendrite shorts? Or do they happen just don't burn?
There are a number of reasons why lithium batteries may catastrophically fail and catch fire. Dendrite shorts is one, another reason is poor alignment of the layers during assembly, allowing for eventual shifting of layers leading to internal shorting. Another is conductive or sharp debris getting into the battery during manufacturing, and after a while the anode/cathode separator getting pierced by the debris. Lots of reasons!
have I misread or 3/4 of the article explained what a battery is and only final tiny part got to "short-circuiting dendrites don't happen without electrolite"?
dendrites are an inherent problem with liquid elctrolytes and I would have emphasized that as well