Ford Motor Company is teaming up with Solid Power (earlier post) to develop all solid-state batteries (ASSB) for next-generation electric vehicles. The announced partnership will focus on further developing ASSBs toward automotive requirements.

Solid Power’s solid-state technology combines a cathode, metallic lithium anode, and a safe, inorganic solid electrolyte layer. Solid-state batteries offer improved energy and safety as compared to current industry-standard lithium-ion batteries.

This partnership will heavily leverage Solid Power’s first fully automated, roll-to-roll production facility, which is anticipated to be fully operational in Q2 2019.

ASSBs have the potential to provide greater energy, which translates to greater run-time per charge or in the case of an electric vehicle, greater range from a fully charged battery. By combining state-of-the-art cathodes with metallic lithium anodes, ASSBs can achieve up to a 50% increase in cell level energy vs. current lithium-ion cells while even greater energy improvements are possible with more advanced cathodes, which is an additional area of development for Solid Power.

—Doug Campbell, Solid Power’s co-founder and CEO

Potential benefits of Solid Power’s ASSBs include:

• Fifty percent higher energy vs. current state-of-the-art (SOTA) lithium-ion, which can increase at the module- and pack-level due to design simplicity.

• Substantially improved safety due to the elimination of the flammable liquid electrolyte as used in lithium-ion.

• Low-cost battery-pack designs through minimization of safety features and simplified thermal management.

• High manufacturability due to significant compatibility with automated, industry-standard, roll-to-roll production.

This latest news follows Solid Power’s announcement in September of 2018 that it closed $20 million in a Series A investment round.

Ford Motor Company participated in a subsequent closing of that round, which included investors Volta Energy Technologies, Hyundai CRADLE, Samsung Venture Investment Corp., Sanoh Industrial Co., Solvay Ventures, and A123 Systems.

In December of 2017, Solid Power announced its partnership with the BMW Group to jointly develop Solid Power’s solid-state batteries for electric vehicle applications and to tailor Solid Power’s technology toward automotive requirements for high-performance electric vehicles.

Solid-state battery technology has the potential to help us deliver electric vehicles that are even safer and more capable. Our involvement with Solid Power enables us to further collaborate in an important emerging technology that could truly transform the design and integration of smart electric vehicles into tomorrow’s smart world.

—Ken Washington, vice president, Research and Advanced Engineering, and chief technology officer, Ford Motor Company