A charge of 800 kilometers in one minute will cost one-third of the cost of conventional lithium batteries

Longer range, shorter charging time, safer use... These are the goals that major scientific research institutions and companies continue to pursue when it comes to electric vehicles. Now, electric car maker Fisker is filing a patent for a solid-state battery that could increase the range of electric vehicles to 500 miles (about 805 kilometers) and reduce charging time to one minute. The company plans to commercialize the battery by 2023.

Founded in 2005, Fisker is based in California, United States, and was founded by former BMW designer Henry Fisker. In February 2014, Fisker was acquired by China's Wanxiang Group and changed its name to Karma.

According to the DailyMail on November 14, Fisco filed a patent application this week for a solid-state battery. The patent covers new materials and manufacturing processes that are important for achieving the energy density, performance and cost targets required for batteries and facilitating the promotion and application of electric vehicles.

A solid-state battery is a battery that uses a solid electrode and a solid electrolyte. The most commonly used batteries are liquid batteries, and the electrolytes are mostly liquid. Solid-state batteries are ideal for electric vehicles because of their high power and weight.

However, early research results show that there are still many limitations to the commercial application of solid-state batteries, such as low electrode current density, limited temperature range, limited available materials, high cost, and complex manufacturing processes. In addition, there are several failure modes that can affect the performance of solid-state batteries, including high contact resistance within the electrode layer structure and low ion mobility, resulting in relatively low battery discharge capacity.

Patent Diagram

Fisco says its solid-state battery, which uses three-dimensional electrodes, attempts to overcome this challenge. This three-dimensional electrode has 25 times the surface area of a normal thin-film electrode in a solid-state battery, and has high electronic and ionic conductivity, allowing for fast charging and low temperature operation.

As a result, the energy density of this solid-state battery is 2.5 times that of conventional Lithium Batteries. As materials and manufacturing continue to improve, Fisco expects the battery to cost one-third of conventional lithium batteries by 2020. In addition, the risk of the battery exploding is low.

"This breakthrough marks the beginning of a new era in solid-state battery materials and manufacturing technology," said Fabio Albano, vice president of battery systems at Fisco. "We are addressing other barriers to the commercialization of solid-state batteries, such as battery performance at low temperatures," he said.

Fisco said the battery will be on display at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January and is expected to be commercially available in 2023. The company is currently in discussions with potential non-automotive partners to commercialize the battery as early as 2023.

In fact, solid-state batteries are not an entirely new area of research. Scientists have been working on the technology in the lab for years. However, production costs, charging cycle durability, and other issues have kept them from being commercialized.

In addition to Fisco, other companies and scientific research institutions have devoted considerable attention to this area of research and development. For example, Japan's NEDO (Japan's New energy industry Technology Comprehensive Development Agency) developed a research and development plan as early as 2008, and plans to achieve mass production of solid-state batteries in 2030, including solid-state lithium, solid-state lithium-sulfur, and solid-state lithium-air batteries. In July this year, Japan's Toyota made new progress on solid-state battery patents, and announced that it will launch a new electric vehicle equipped with all-solid-state batteries in 2022. Germany's Volkswagen has also said that it is already planning the next generation of Electric Vehicle Batteries, solid-state batteries with a range of more than 1,000 kilometers, which will be mass-produced in 2025.