The race to move beyond lithium-ion

 The next generation of batteries needs to be three times cheaper

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DON HILLEBRAND, AN American motor-industry veteran, has an intriguing job. In a warehouse at the secure Argonne National Laboratory, which arose from the University of Chicago’s work on the Manhattan Project, he scrutinises foreign-made cars, trucks and lithium-ion batteries to discover their technological secrets and share them with his employer, the Department of Energy, and its friends in the Big Three car companies.

His engineers have dismantled the engine of a new Honda model to lay bare its energy-saving technologies and then “reverse-engineered” it to make sure they have fully understood them. They do something similar with lithium-ion batteries, though they rarely dismantle them completely. When they do, it is in an explosion-proof room, Mr Hillebrand chuckles.

Much of the science behind those batteries originally came from America (ironically, the labs of ExxonMobil, America’s biggest oil company), but it was Japan’s Sony that first commercialised them in 1991. America is now in a race to catch up with Japan and South Korea, the two front-runners, though China is also a strong competitor. “The Asians are ten years ahead of us,” says Mr Hillebrand.

Steve LeVine, in his book “The Powerhouse”, describes the contest as “the great battery war”. Winning it could not only revolutionise transport, it could cause the biggest oil crisis of all time. America has emerged victorious from some skirmishes; for instance, Argonne scientists developed the nickel-cobalt-manganese cathode used in the plug-in hybrid Chevy Volt. But the DoE’s loyalties are split because, as well as wanting to develop batteries that could put the oil industry out of business, it also has other energy industries to nurture, notably oil and natural gas.

Mr Hillebrand believes it may still be decades before batteries dislodge oil from the energy mix, especially if oil prices stay low. (One of his senior scientists, Amgad Elgowainy, drives a Volt, but says that with petrol at $2 a gallon, he prefers filling it up with fuel rather than charging it.)

Yet in a different department at Argonne, known as JCESR (Joint Centre for Energy Storage Research), scientists are trying to go beyond lithium-ion to make batteries five times more energy-dense (meaning smaller and lighter) at one-fifth the cost. Scientists test different materials for anodes, cathodes and electrolytes and run their findings through numerous discharging and recharging cycles in an effort to produce safer and more efficient batteries.

George Crabtree, JCESR’s director, says one of the current favourites is a lithium-sulphur battery, though more work is needed on the number of charging cycles it can endure. The aim is to come up with an EV battery, whether lithium-based or not, at a cost below $100 a kilowatt hour, which would power a car that sells for $20,000. Despite Tesla’s efforts, he doubts that lithium-ion can deliver the goods. “With the present low oil price you have to get to an even lower battery price to become transformative,” he says. Some also worry that production of lithium (pictured) in South America and elsewhere may be insufficient to support a transport revolution. But fears of peak lithium may be as premature as those of peak oil.