There are many projects that try to improve the properties of existing lithium batteries. One of them is an American company Sion Power. The latter offers several test samples of multilayer accumulators with capacities from 6 to 20 Ah, while some of them are already supplied to car companies for testing. Licieron EV (electric cars) and Licieron HE (aviation) batteries are available. It uses an anode made of lithium metal, which makes it possible to significantly increase the energy density. The manufacturer calls this principle PLA (Protected Lithium Anode).
In 2020, he introduced the Licieron EV battery, which had a mass energy density of 420 Wh/kg (about half more than today’s better Li-Ion NCM batteries) and a volume of 700 Wh/l (at the level of today’s Li-Ion NCM cells). The model with a capacity of 1.8 Ah reached a lifetime of about 850 cycles, when they reached 70% capacity. After that, the capacity decreased relatively quickly, so that they had 80% of the original value after about 700 cycles. In the case of an electric car with a range of 400 km, this would mean a lifespan of about 250,000 km (up to 80%).
In the same year, the company also demonstrated Licieron HE (High Energy) cells, which are aimed at aviation. Densities of 500 Wh/kg and 1000 Wh/l are already expected there. They went through 1000 cycles, which according to the manufacturer means that they would be capable of 2 years of flying (clean time). But let’s get to the current situation.
Licieron EV in the 6Ah variant, it reached a lifetime of over 800 cycles, and the company also showed cells that only reached 70% of their original capacity after 2,500 cycles. But we will be more interested 17 Ah variant that was independently tested with the resulting densities 400 Wh/kg a 780 Wh/l. Compared to the articles from 2020, they got a little worse in terms of weight, but they improved in terms of volume. Either way, they are doing very well, especially in terms of weight. A 100kWh accumulator would thus have 250 kg in cells instead of today’s approx. 330-420 kg, if we do not count the semi-solid-state accumulators in NIO cars.
It already supplies these cells to car companies for testing, and in total over 18,000 cells were produced in various variants. It is said that one of the customers should also be Cummins (a well-known manufacturer of diesel engines, e.g. for trucks). The manufacturer is also already taking pre-orders for the 56Ah variants, which should be available from the end of 2024.
2023-07-28 03:33:35
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