LG has made a battery breakthrough that could bring down the costs of electric cars further, as the race to develop more efficient technology heats up.
Electrical technology company LG Energy Solution and Seoul National University have announced a breakthrough in the development of Lithium Manganese-Rich (LMR) batteries.
The breakthrough ensures better stability of the battery making it recharge more fully, lengthening its life time while also reducing the costs of production.
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What is an LMR battery?
You’ve heard of Lithium-Ferro-Phosphate batteries (LFP) and Nickel-Manganese-Cobalt (NMC) batteries, well LMR batteries are the next generation of how electric cars will store their power.
As the name suggests, LMR batteries contain lithium and manganese metals, but the advantages to them are hard to ignore.
LMR batteries are super energy dense, which means they can be used for high performance cars that want colossal grunt, and for long driving ranges for everyday cars. They also don’t contain cobalt.
Currently cobalt is of great ethical concern regarding how it’s mined, the environmental factors of the material and the sheer cost.
What's LG’s battery breakthrough?
OK, we’re going to get a bit technical. So hold on.
A barrier for LMR batteries until now is the recharging issues - they require a tonne of voltage to charge, but this destabilises the cathode and that means oxygen is lost and this causes the crystals to warp.
Basically, the battery loses the ability to hold its charge over time, while capacity also fades.
LG has worked out how to build LMR batteries that don’t need a high voltage to charge and this retains the structural integrity of the crystal structure and so there’s minimal battery fade over time.
This is huge, but it’s very early days and the development is still in the research phase. LG is celebrating the breakthrough.
“This research addresses one of the key challenges facing LMR batteries,” an LG Energy Solution spokesperson said in a press statement.
“It demonstrates that stable battery life can be secured even in large-format cells by effectively suppressing gas generation, providing an important foundation for growth in the next-generation LMR battery market.”
What effects will this have on electric cars?
Currently NMC batteries, which use cobalt are in high-powered or bigger cars that demand lots of grunt. Autobahn cruisers like the Porsche Taycan, big family SUVs, such as the Kia EV9 or long-legged EVs such as the Zeekr 7X need NMC batteries to provide substantial range and power.
But NMC batteries are also why these vehicles are so expensive - the high cost of producing them from sourcing materials to making them is passed onto the consumer.
LFP batteries don’t use cobalt, which is excellent, but they aren’t as energy dense as NMC batteries and that’s adequate for small cars and suburban family SUVs, but more range and power would be better.
LMR batteries could replace LFP and NMC altogether, and this will reduce the price of EVs while ensuring long range and good driving performance, while not losing charging capacity over time.
That’s why LG is celebrating this breakthrough and you can bet car companies will be watching the progress very closely.
