Batteries for Electric Vehicles - Prof. Maximilian Fichtner

00:00:00: Battery Generation by Patrick golden and Leonard Pitts has brought to you by Celeste.

00:00:07: This podcast is brought to you by the helmholtz institute on and Celeste the center for electrochemical energy storage will and Kassel Germany welcome to battery generation your podcast on electromobility and European battery research.

00:00:22: Lennart good to see you good to see you too while everybody Welcome to the second episode of our show today we will talk about the most valuable parts of an electric vehicle.

00:00:32: The battery lots of people asked us to display the European market look at the latest numbers discuss the pros and the cons of,

00:00:40: electric vehicles such as charging points range

00:00:43: and safety issues and of course we cover the materials the new cell Concepts and chemistry's and recycling of batteries and before we start if you guys like what you here make sure to subscribe ring the bell and give us a thumbs up.

00:00:57: And as always if you have ideas or info send us feedback that's hello at battery generation.com that's hello,

00:01:05: at battery generation.com let's go Patrick Our Guest is already in the room,

00:01:10: it is Professor Dr Maximilian fichtner is a German Professor for solid-state chemistry at the University of William he's the director of The helmholtz Institute home he's the spokesman for the research platform Celeste and also

00:01:24: for poulos cluster of Excellence that's post lithium storage good morning Professor good morning everybody Professor face now we both know each other

00:01:33: fairly well we talk regularly about emobility and Battery materials on the German podcast Gallatin when we first started our podcast back in

00:01:43: October 2020 I think it was there were not even 200,000.

00:01:48: Evo calls on German roads nowadays we see more than 500,000 Vehicles what happened in this one and a half years.

00:01:58: Yeah I think there has been a tremendous progress if I remember correctly the number of

00:02:05: battery Vehicles Rose from 80,000 in 2019 over 130,000 in 2022 now 310,000

00:02:18: battery electric vehicles plug-in hybrids are in addition they are typically 30,000 less so this is a plus of two hundred and ten percent

00:02:31: but this is not everything also the production of battery cells has

00:02:37: kind of encounter the turnaround if you will while they had been a great hesitation in the early and mid 2010's because,

00:02:47: car companies we're thinking that this is not their Core Business cannot be.

00:02:53: There are meanwhile nine gigafactory is planned or under construction in Germany alone this is this is quite unique in Europe This development.

00:03:04: You're right it's true and we can also see that the commitment has changed with all these car manufacturers but the question is when I go out here on the street I hear a lot of people that are still in Germany that are very skeptical

00:03:16: that the E vehicle will stay these they say it's what's just a face it's it'll go away why do why do you think different or what's your take on it.

00:03:25: Another question is if it goes away by what would it be replaced so this,

00:03:33: brings up the question what would be the alternative and I think every future technology must be as efficient and as clean as possible and also affordable yeah and,

00:03:47: to my opinion and this is not only my opinion all the other options fall behind the full electric drive if you if you look at fuel cell vehicles or.

00:04:00: Combustion engines running on E fuels they are both based on hydrogen and this hydrogen is currently coming from fossil resources its obtained by steam reforming of natural gas which is methane,

00:04:15: and the greenhouse gas footstep of such machines isn't the order of dead of a diesel car,

00:04:23: and I know that there have been concerns about the lithium technology because it needs Metals such as nickel or Cobalt.

00:04:33: Especially kobold was heavily criticized in the last year's but the Cobalt content has been lowered every year in a battery

00:04:43: and the first car fleets are already running without Cobalt and of course it is clear that the entire concept will only work if the materials are becoming.

00:04:56: Part of a circular economy yes we will talk about this professor fictional let's first of all talk about the personal choice.

00:05:05: Why people hesitate right now in purchasing a non vehicle I brought a graphic from three years ago with me it says

00:05:14: more than 40% of the people that decide against an all-electric vehicle say the range is still not enough then there is another 40% saying it's too expensive no place to charge and,

00:05:29: there's also

00:05:30: reasons for the overall battery life is too short the reliability is not enough safety issues nowadays many people say the range is acceptable but nevertheless.

00:05:44: How far do I get with a fully charged electric vehicle what are the current ranges of these TVs.

00:05:52: Meanwhile you decide the range by your purse yeah depends on which kind of battery you buy with your car and which,

00:06:05: call you buy if you are in the upper segment let's say in the range where hydrogen cars are also found

00:06:14: you have driving ranges of 800 kilometers

00:06:18: this is not out of sight and what I notice is that.

00:06:26: Many of these arguments have been true or where true

00:06:31: while ago maybe five to 10 years ago there was this range anxiety and people were concerned about the safety your Strand and all these issues and.

00:06:45: This is one of the reasons why I'm glad that we have such podcasts now because I think as a scientist we haven't done a very good job in the past because we were so glad and happy about

00:07:00: our our results that we kind of forgot to communicate this to the public

00:07:07: yeah just two numbers in the last ten years the battery price fell by 90% at the same time the capacity doubled.

00:07:17: Yeah and this is something which is often not known and people are still in these discussions of the early 2010s.

00:07:27: Do you think this is a trend that will continue.

00:07:30: Because this is do those of those numbers have really really impressive I mean if this will continue I think in a couple of years it will be a no-brainer which car to buy.

00:07:39: Yeah I mean we can certainly yes.

00:07:43: Okay leave we can discuss that in detail if you will what is already.

00:07:50: I would say in the in the Industrial Development phase or in the pre-production.

00:07:57: Um I don't know whether we want to do that now if not we can we can do it late do it later Professor fishnet just quickly summarize what do you think,

00:08:06: is a real reason nowadays to not buy an electric vehicle yeah if people are afraid.

00:08:13: Of things like driving range too short or some people also think that they always catch fire under certain circumstances which is.

00:08:26: Which can happen but happel happens much.

00:08:31: More seldom that than with combustion engine driven cars from the statistics but.

00:08:39: I think people are afraid to change to this technology which is not known by them yeah and also many people don't want to change their habits

00:08:53: I think this is another important issue.

00:08:56: I mean is it a reason a real reason that you have to charge this vehicle maybe once a week is it harder.

00:09:04: In general then too you know.

00:09:06: Visit a gas station let me give you an example pattern because I think it's a good good question because I've been talking with my sister recently because we are pulling a car and it's phasing out so we were thinking about okay if we're going to buy

00:09:18: maybe we'll go electric and

00:09:22: then there's actually the the issue like if you can't if you don't have a charging point at home you'll need to look like it somewhere and then go back three hours later to repack it those kind of issues what do you think do we stand currently because yeah.

00:09:35: The car needs the backup system as you as you mentioned there are big differences if you if you have a wall box at home yeah

00:09:45: you park your car plug in your wall box and then go for sleep or do you know what so ever and your charging time where you weighed is zero.

00:10:00: Virtually you're one of one minute or so because it does it alone if you if you have to charge it somewhere it depends very much on the kind of charging station that you have

00:10:15: yeah and if you go too fast charger supercharger.

00:10:22: This can be really fast it goes in in in 15 minutes or so 15 20 minutes

00:10:30: and this is not so critical just a little story about that a colleague of mine here

00:10:40: drives a Tesla Model 3 and he went to a conference in Copenhagen with it and I asked him

00:10:48: how did you do that

00:10:50: and he said okay he rode with the charged machine over the Rhineland and then stopped somewhere at a supercharger of Tesla.

00:11:04: And when he when he saw added in in this parking lot did the car already opened the flap and he just had to plug in the cable and then went for a coffee.

00:11:16: So you don't have to wait in a line and wait.

00:11:20: Until the colleague in front of you has prepared to ladder macchiatos for the customer and so you are just going to the coffee and he said he was having a coffee and the causal and then

00:11:36: he's charging app made noise because he was already

00:11:43: finished and blocked the charging station and that this is something where you have to pay a fee in addition and and this was after 20 minutes or so.

00:11:55: Music.

00:12:02: Sufficient let's now talk about the battery materials that are found inside a battery what kind of materials are used nowadays and.

00:12:10: Materials were maybe used three to five years ago has there been a change.

00:12:15: Dad that's been a big change I would say this is even how we say in Germany and material damnable kind of.

00:12:25: Dawning of new materials it's dawn of materials or Twilight of material depending on.

00:12:35: Yeah

00:12:36: maybe a look in the back the first Lithium-ion batteries which was sold in the early 1990s had positive electrode which was made entirely of cobalt oxide.

00:12:51: This was by the way the invention which led to a Nobel Prize 2019 and this is a this is a material which looks like a shelf,

00:13:02: and in this space is of the Shelf you can sort in the lithium.

00:13:07: But soon after that it became clear that kobold is not a very optimal material so already in the 90s effort started,

00:13:17: to replace COBOL because it's very expensive it's toxic,

00:13:22: and in the last year's also other issues came up like child labor in Congo it's.

00:13:29: This was actually not discussed in 90s there were other reasons and then this was gradually replaced by other elements like manganese and nickel.

00:13:39: So that over the years in the early 2000s there was only thirty percent Cobalt left

00:13:45: and then it was 20% and was 10% this is state of the art of the moment and the Tesla batteries they have 2.8 percent,

00:13:57: cool bug.

00:13:58: In in the in the positive electrode and now the first car fleets are already running without kobold because there hasn't been a change in the design of batteries which allows the integration of

00:14:10: materials which have not been considered so far and this is this this breakthrough which has been achieved one or two years ago that the designers of batteries made

00:14:23: big Leap Forward because they were able to redesign the interior of a battery such that more active material can be

00:14:33: integrate.

00:14:34: Yeah so far in a battery that's so much packaging and housing and stuff included that only 25% of the weight of a battery,

00:14:45: is it really the storage material

00:14:47: yeah and this can be increased by the new designs by say 30% or so yeah that means also other materials which are,

00:14:56: basically great because they are very safe they have sustainable composition they they are cheap and and long-lasting

00:15:07: but we're too light so too fluffy so that they could not be integrated in a

00:15:15: battery in the past they can now be considered and the winner of this game at the moment is the iron phosphate

00:15:23: so this is a very abundant materials non-toxic you basically you can eat it and this is now the cathode of Future car fleets or at least parts of them

00:15:36: no it is not the high performance material but there can be enough integrated in the battery so that you can have sufficient driving range

00:15:44: and I was just talking about the cathode and then comes the anode this is the the negative electrode

00:15:51: and they're so far we have used another shelf this has been graphite.

00:15:58: Graphite is the black stuff that you have in pencils for example and and this is a layered substance where the lithium can crawl in when the battery is charged

00:16:11: and the problem is that the lithium by this process is pretty much diluted and the capacity is not so high the.

00:16:21: Batteries safe by this electrode but but it's it has.

00:16:27: Not a very big capacity and now people have found ways to replace that gradually by,

00:16:36: silicon or silicon oxide compounds or mixture of silicon oxide and porous carbons and thereby you can,

00:16:46: boost driving range by another thirty to forty percent and this is coming now.

00:16:52: Right now not a single battery in electric vehicles.

00:16:58: Comes without lithium how sustainable is the production of lithium in general.

00:17:06: Yeah I think lithium together with Cobalt have been these two candidates which have been criticized most in the past.

00:17:17: With Cobalt we have another issue and that is that it runs empty if we continue to,

00:17:23: build our batteries in the way how we did in the past so that there is a huge pressure to go away from Cobalt

00:17:29: with lithium the situation is more relaxed I would say according to geologists there should be lithium around for the next 60 to 70 years.

00:17:42: And of course this must also be recycled the the biggest criticism associated with lithium.

00:17:50: Has been that in one of the regions where lithium is produced in Chile in the Atacama region where you have to Salt Lake.

00:18:00: That's the lithium production would consume a lot of water.

00:18:05: Just for explanation lithium is produced by pumping up the salt brine from the sea.

00:18:14: On to the top of the salt crust of the Sea of the lake and and and then.

00:18:22: This is just evaporated by the Sun the water and then the the salt which are in this brine are gradually.

00:18:29: Precipitating and among them is also lithium chloride and this is collected and it must be washed.

00:18:40: And therefore you need fresh water.

00:18:43: Yeah and there have been protests around that this would lead to.

00:18:51: Lowering of the groundwater levels in these regions which is are already quite dry and.

00:19:02: Now the point is if you look at the real numbers which can be obtained from the Chilean.

00:19:11: Ministry of Mines this is quite interesting there is.

00:19:17: Some water consumptions there's a contingent which cannot be exceeded and and this condition is,

00:19:26: however one of the lowest in this region no it's the same condition as the hotels have around this other Karma.

00:19:35: Lake and it's eight times lower than the contingent or that the water that is consumed by the neighboring copper mines.

00:19:44: And if you ask scientists from this region they say Okay lithium seems to make a contribution but this is not our problem.

00:19:53: They say our problem is named Chucky kamata and this is one of the biggest copper mines in the world and it produces 80 million tons of washed.

00:20:06: Copper ore every year and this is the biggest problem and if you look at the groundwater levels they are indeed sinking but since the 1960s when these copper.

00:20:20: Production started this water discussion has been going on for a long time indeed more.

00:20:27: Tons of lithium nowadays don't even come from South America they come from Australia right.

00:20:35: That there's a mineral called spot of mean and this is just mind in a regular mind so that it is sometimes changing year by year

00:20:44: um at the moment I think it's Australia which has the biggest share of the lithium let's now change again from,

00:20:54: lithium ion batteries to let's say new cell chemistry's that are on the horizon maybe Solid State chemistry there's a lot of things that we get from the news Professor fishnet just.

00:21:05: Which kind of cell chemistry is our may be on the horizon for electric vehicles in 10 years in 15 years you name them.

00:21:15: Yeah interestingly people think often that the solid-state battery.

00:21:20: Is something different to a lithium battery the basically it's the same principle it's just.

00:21:27: The liquid that we have at the moment between the electrodes and this is the so-called electrolyte which transports the iron forth and back that this is replaced by a solid substance.

00:21:40: Yeah and also the graphite is replaced in the negative electrode is replaced by nothing so that you have the pure lithium undiluted on this electrode

00:21:52: I think there has been a lot of progress.

00:21:58: Year-over-year you hear or read that Milestones have been reached for example by

00:22:06: Quantum scape which collaborates with Volkswagen but also by other companies so it looks a little bit as if.

00:22:15: Put be marketed ready in two or three years.

00:22:18: Yeah whether or not they will be integrated in the car from the first moment on I don't know yeah we will see because this is another issue that to change this entire system.

00:22:34: And what would you say what are the advantages of this solid state

00:22:38: battery is there even higher ranges to experience so so so typically people expect 30 to 40 percent higher driving range and this is because in the negative electrode this.

00:22:52: Voluminous graphite is replaced or it's just not used anymore and and lithium metal is used directly

00:23:01: so you do you have to undiluted metal if you will and this saves you a lot of space and weight and this is why you get more.

00:23:09: Active material into the battery.

00:23:12: Music.

00:23:18: Second.

00:23:19: The circular economy before and we talked about the extraction of materials but now let's talk about undoing the battery so where do we stand in terms of recycling because I feel a lot of.

00:23:31: Listeners also asking themselves what how am I harming or not harming the environment with current battery technologies,

00:23:38: yeah now first of all the lifetime of a battery mean what nowadays is let's say 2000 full Cycles.

00:23:50: Until the so-called end of life Criterion has been reached and this is the the 80% residual capacity

00:24:00: two thousand cycles of a 400 km driving range battery means eight eight hundred thousand kilometers

00:24:09: and then there may be even a so-called second life where you you take the battery out of the car and install it in a wind parkour for photovoltaics.

00:24:22: Um and there the conditions are not so harsh compared to to car and they can live another 10 years or so so the majority

00:24:32: of the of the batteries are expected to come back to the recycling

00:24:38: let's say from the midna 2030s on.

00:24:42: 2035 2040 there will be this Gold Rush with recycling at the moment of course batteries are recycled already.

00:24:56: By the classical way and this is if you if you bring bring a battery to the recycle which you please do then the battery is collected it's shredded

00:25:08: yeah and and the parts are brought to a big furnace.

00:25:15: Where they are molten and then you get a big block of molten metal out of that

00:25:20: this contains all the heavy metals iron nickel Cobalt manganese copper and and then there is a slag and the slag contains the.

00:25:33: The Delight Metals such as aluminum and lithium and and then you to do the reprocessing to recycle that stuff,

00:25:42: this is I would say the standard method of recycling currently,

00:25:48: I think there's a bunch of companies which try to find ways which are not so energy-intensive.

00:25:57: This is.

00:25:59: You would take the battery back it is opened by a robot and then these these coated battery foils where you have the active material on top there yes

00:26:12: just

00:26:13: scratched off scraped off and this so-called black mass is collected and washed and and redone.

00:26:23: God it's all so that it can be reused.

00:26:26: This is the development at the moment I think they will probably have something in the next couple of years.

00:26:34: But just for clarification if I get this Big Blob of heavy metal.

00:26:40: Can I in fact use it to build another battery or is that another issue which is still not quite soft like what do I do with this blob.

00:26:50: Now you would have to dissolve it also you put it I would say in a chemical process where the metals are diluted and separated again.

00:27:01: And then with this separated streams of medals.

00:27:06: You do you produce the chemicals that you need as storage materials for your battery.

00:27:13: So this can so from a from a bat at the moment from a battery car that goes to the recycling for the from the entire car about 30 kg come back.

00:27:25: You know all the rest is reside.

00:27:29: I think these sustainable sustainability issues become more and more important to people that want to purchase an electric vehicle last question for you a professor fish tuna

00:27:40: do we even have enough green electricity energy for feeding our future electric vehicles,

00:27:48: keeping in mind that this will scale up and will soon see millions of electric vehicles on German roads and European roads.

00:27:55: This is a very good question yes or no is the answer yes because we already have now.

00:28:05: About forty percent green electricity in the grid and already with the current electricity makes electric vehicle is.

00:28:16: Much more green than any other option so this is by a factor of.

00:28:25: Six or seven less with respect to the to the greenhouse gas emission when it when it is running yeah

00:28:34: and this is also true of 44 battery Vehicles versus hydrogen vehicles at the moment because there's no green hydrogen as I already mentioned so this is true at the moment so you have an immediate greenhouse gas

00:28:51: when you when you start driving electric vehicles and of course it would be much better if in the future.

00:29:01: Green electricity is used in Indy

00:29:04: production of the materials for for the for the battery and the rest of the car when the production of the cells of the batteries yeah and if we if we get there and

00:29:17: to my knowledge more or less all the the plant gigafactory plan to use at least

00:29:25: a big part of there.

00:29:28: Electricity consumption coming from from Green Green electricity and if this is realized then we are tremendously better than any other option at the moment.

00:29:40: Okay so thank you very much for your time Professor Vision I hope this podcast could contribute to debunking these myths about electric vehicles thank you very much for these insights you provided.

00:29:53: With all the changes going on in the material field.

00:29:59: If I want to help the environment and I'm thinking about getting a new car should I buy now or should I just wait like a little longer because so much is currently changing.

00:30:09: What would you advise me.

00:30:11: This is the same question people post themselves in the 1910s OR 1920s whether they should buy such a vehicle now or later.

00:30:22: Um from my own experience driving an electric car it's fun yeah it is great because it's silent it's,

00:30:31: it's brewed when you accelerate and and then you can can flow over all over the hills and streets this is this is a great feeling and if you want to have it.

00:30:45: Buy it now maybe okay thank you so much Professor dear listeners if you want to support us.

00:30:53: Hit the Subscribe button and your podcast app and give us a like.

00:30:57: And as always if you know any industry experts that we you think we should talk to.

00:31:04: Give us a call and write us an email at hello at battery generation.com that's hello.

00:31:11: Feathery generation.com or send us a message via Twitter on Celeste 18 or helmholtz boom thank you so much Professor feature for your time see you later.

00:31:20: Thanks bye-bye this podcast is also supported by the katsuo Institute of Technology boom University

00:31:31: the German Aerospace Center and the center for solar energy and hydrogen research Baden-Baden Beck.