2025 Battery Roadmaps

A look at the 2025 Battery Roadmaps. Perhaps closer to describe this as a start of 2025 review of the latest battery roadmaps, research and funding directions that will shape the industry. Here we look at the four largest cell manufacturers and across the government funded research.

The big themes are:

• Higher energy density
  • CATL => 330Wh/kg
  • BYD => 210Wh/kg Blade LFP cell
  • LG => Lithium Sulfur for UAV
  • Panasonic => 1000Wh/litre by 2031
• Faster charging
  • CATL/BYD => <10 mins for 0-80%
• Longer life
• Increased safety
• Sustainable

As China pushes the technology faster with a clear emphasis on fast industrialisation, the rest of the world plays catch up. That means Europe and USA are looking for alternative chemistry, development of the complete supply chain and legislating for lifecycle.

In addition, more companies are looking at the complete battery lifecycle and the management of that. The cloud management of batteries was initially the realm of startups and is now in the mainstream cell manufacturers complete ownership system.

CATL

CATL are the largest battery manufacturer and hence perhaps the first to look to for the latest trends [1]. Their list includes the following:

• High Energy Density
  • => 330Wh/kg
• Long Life
  • => 16 years or 2 million km
• Super-fast Charging
  • => 80% capacity in 5 minutes
• Authentic Safety
  • => aircraft level safety
• Automatic Temperature Control
  • able to warm up 6°C per minute
• Smart Management
  • => 24-hour full life cycle comprehensive monitoring

Each of these has a number of supporting technology areas and you can delve into those on the CATL website.

This post has been built based on the support and sponsorship from: Thermo Fisher Scientific, Eatron Technologies, About:Energy, Quarto Technical Services and Alvatek.

BYD

• Introducing the 2nd generation of the Blade
  • 15% cost reduction
  • 210Wh/kg at cell level for the long blade
    • 8C discharge 3C charge
  • 160Wh/kg at cell level for the short blade
    • 16C discharge 8C charge
• Investing in Sodium-Ion Blade as the low cost alternative chemistry

LG Energy Solution

• Lower cost
  • Dry electrode
  • LFP and LMFP
  • Sodium Ion
• Higher energy density
  • Lithium Sulfur for UAV
  • Bipolar Semi-Solid State
  • Solid State
• Battery Ecosystem
  • management, rental and recycling

LG Energy Solution are also re-balancing their business to reduce reliance on automotive sales.

Panasonic

• higher energy density
  • 5% increase in 2170 cells by 2026
  • all-solid-state batteries for small drones and factory robots by 2029
  • 1000Wh/litre by 2031
• increase production capacity
  • increase production capacity by 10% per GWh 2026 by switching to next generation cells
  • 20% increase in human productivity and a 10% reduction in the capital investment amount per GWh
• more sustainable
  • halve the 2022 carbon footprint by 2031

Government Research Funding

In the USA the funding is probably about to be cut as I write this note, we may need to wait and see what happens.

In Europe we see the roadmaps challenging:

• Sustainability => underpinned by the Battery Passport
• Innovation areas:
  • lifetime
  • higher material utilization
  • high power density
  • increase energy density

In the UK the Faraday Challenge is investing in:

• cost-effective
• high-performing
• have longer range
• faster charging
• long-lasting
• safe and sustainable

Out of all of this we have not mentioned much in terms of solid state, we will cover this in depth separately.

References

1. Innovative Technology, CATL
2. BATTERIES INNOVATION ROADMAP 2035, Versions V3.0, June 2024, EuroBat 2035
3. BYD targets 15% cost reduction with blade battery 2.0, CarNewsChina.com
4. Progress in Medium- to Long-term Strategy, Panasonic Energy
5. Faraday Battery Challenge, UKRI

2024 Battery Roadmaps

More 46xx cell applications from BMW, GM and Rimac- are they too late and has the Blade LFP surpassed this “lower cost” design route?

Sodium Ion cells to become the next step in the story of Blade for BYD from 2025. This is whilst the industry thinks that Sodium Ion will be used in 2/3 wheeled vehicles initially and stationary storage systems.

Lower cost LFP chemistry for mainstream vehicle manufacturers – this is definitely a late reaction to BYD’s powerful demonstration of LFP Blade design.

See also: Battery Chemistry Roadmap