Nissan's New Battery Tech is a Potential Bomb

Nissan Motors has been currently developing batteries in an advanced solid-state. They hope that this will be a replacement for lithium-ion batteries, as it was apparently much safer. Although, Nissan’s new battery tech is deemed to be a potential bomb. To know the reason, read the complete article.

What we know: Nissan’s new battery tech

The engineer who is leading Nissan in the solid-state batteries project wanted to imbibe the notion that solid-state batteries are safer than lithium-ion packs. It is true that lithium-ion packs have a flammable liquid electrolyte present, which can make them dangerous. Although, solid-state batteries contain a lot of energy crammed in together. This may actually be very harmful if anything goes wrong. The total energy density of the batteries will be doubled, so it is a potential bomb that could blast at any point.

The Japanese manufacturer is planning to go huge on the electric revolution as of late. The development of gas engines has been stopped and their focus has shifted to electrifying its lineup of cars at a fast pace too. Nissan has made a promise to their customers and stakeholders that they will introduce a lightweight, compact, energy-dense battery system six years from now. They believe that many inherent risks have already been solved. But the batteries could be dangerous and it also comes with many time restraints.

Production of the batteries

They are made in smaller and limited quantities, in smaller batches in one of the Nissan facilities. The workers mix an electrolyte of cathode powder with a sludgy black substance with their hands. The result of the mixture is then flattened between aluminium sheets.

“It would take a very long time before we could make a battery for a car in this room. The mass production equipment will have to be more sophisticated” says the executive at Nissan.

The aluminium sheets are later wedged and compressed at more than three times the pressure needed for standard lithium-ion batteries. They are then stacked with anode sheets. These units will finally be vacuum sealed into separate aluminium pouches. This entire process is very time consuming and slow. Nissan is only able to produce around 50 of these pouches every month, which is significantly less. An average car requires about 5,000 pouches, which will take a lot of time to scrap up enough for one vehicle itself.