Cell Roadmap - Battery Design

When looking at a product roadmap there will be a request to understand how the energy storage system will improve throughout the lifetime of the product. Also, you will need to understand if the roadmap contains disruptive elements that might require a redesign of the product.

Sometimes these changes in technology can be very disruptive and very enabling at the same time.

Cell Energy Density Roadmap to 2035

We took every cell in our cell database that has a published energy density and a start-of-production year, 541 cells in all, and plotted them against time by chemistry. The best production cell in each year gives a trend line. We then extended each chemistry to 2035, using that trend, the practical limits of the chemistry, and the targets that governments and cell makers have published.

The short version: conventional NMC and NCA cells are approaching 350 Wh/kg and will struggle to pass 400 Wh/kg. LFP has already made most of its gains. The step to 450 to 500 Wh/kg in an EV-sized cell depends on lithium-metal, silicon-dominant and solid-state cells, and every one of those at that level is still a pre-production sample.

2025 Battery Roadmaps

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

Molicel’s 21700 High-Power Roadmap – reflects a strategic evolution from a power-cell specialist to a full-spectrum performance supplier. The P-Series offers versatility, the XA-Series delivers extreme power for hybrid propulsion, and the PX-Series provides premium power and energy where performance justifies the cost.

Cell Energy Density Roadmaps – Wh/kg is a key metric that we look at when comparing cells. Looking at production values and adding roadmaps gives you an interesting view as to the future. Is 900Wh/kg credible when production cells have taken 30 years to move from 80Wh/kg to 300Wh/kg?

2024 Battery Roadmaps

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

All of this is underpinned by the fundamental chemistry research, this fundamental research takes time to develop, understand and solve. Even then the new ideas in chemistry take time to industrialise. Quite a few fail at the scale-up phase.

energy density roadmap — *perhaps a pragmatic roadmap for improvement we are likely to see in Wh/kg?*

A plot of the cell specification sheet energy density versus year and we see that there are some outliers, but the general trend is a year on year increase of 5.6Wh/kg.

Also, it’s worth looking at the history of the battery.

Chemistry Roadmap

The chemistry roadmap is a useful guide. It shows the move to more nickel-rich chemistry as a drive to reduce cost and reduce cobalt dependency.

This also shows lithium anode and solid state as the next generation.

Within the cell roadmap there are a number of other technology threads that are trying to unlock energy density and reduce costs.

One of the simplest ways is to increase the size of the cell. Increasing the Ah capacity means less overhead in terms of supporting material, lower number of parts in the manufacturing process. Hence lower cost. The downside can be electrical and thermal performance of the cell. An example of this is the Tesla move from 18650 to 21700 to 46800.