- An American battery company wants to completely rethink how lithium-ion batteries are made.
- The company claims its electrode-to-pack design eliminates waste and boosts energy efficiency.
- It can accommodate any chemistry and size and suits a variety of applications, according to the company.
By and large, electric vehicle battery makers are working toward one ultimate goal: making battery packs that supply more range for less money. Better safety, fast charging, durability and recyclability are also worthy aims. But they all revolve around the same north star: maximizing range from a smaller battery at the lowest possible cost.
To do that, battery makers are quickly moving away from traditional pack design. Many now skip the step of battery modules and instead integrate battery cells directly into the larger pack (cell-to-pack), or even into the vehicle body itself (cell-to-body). Massachusetts-based 24M Technologies has taken it a step further, developing a novel electrode-to-pack (ETOP) method to enhance both energy efficiency and cost-effectiveness.
The company says traditional cell-and-module designs contain a large portion of inactive and non-energy-carrying materials, like the cylindrical cell casing, for example. Its ETOP manufacturing platform, on the other hand, integrates electrodes—the components that store and release energy—directly into the pack. This eliminates the need for the plastics and metals used in traditional cell casings.
In other words: By eliminating any hardware that isn’t actively involved in storing energy, you can pack more energy into a given space. And that improves energy density and range. This is the thinking behind cell-to-body and cell-to-pack designs too, but 24M is getting rid of the cell too.
24M’s sealed electrode-to-pack battery design.
Photo by: 24M
24M said its novel platform uses a sealed anode and cathode pair that’s integrated directly into the battery pack, eliminating the need for individual cells or modules. In theory, the vast majority of the battery volume would consist of active energy-carrying components, which would increase energy density and boost range.
In traditional lithium-ion batteries, the electrodes comprise about 30% to 60% of a battery’s volume, according to the company. The rest is taken up by inactive materials, which include structural and supporting components that do not store energy but are still essential to making the battery work safely. With an electrode-to-pack design, the active electrode materials can account for up to 80% of the battery’s volume, the company claims.
That could apparently allow a range of 1,000 miles per charge, 24M Technologies says. That’s about double the range of today’s very best EVs.
“The pressure to compete on price, design and performance is mounting for American industries that are heavily reliant on imported batteries,” 24M President and CEO Naoki Ota said in a statement. “The U.S. must advance battery innovation, not just scale production to close the gap with competitors overseas.” The company is betting on technology and innovation to stay competitive, since matching Chinese battery makers on scale and commercialization remains an uphill battle.
These batteries are well-suited for electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, 24M said. But the inherent design flexibility and ability to integrate any battery chemistry, size, or voltage means they could be developed for everything from grid batteries to electric vehicles.
While it sounds promising on paper, launching this at scale won’t be easy or straightforward. The existing battery supply chain and infrastructure are already built around conventional cell formats. Retooling factories for a fundamentally different process would likely be capital-intensive.
Plus, it’s unclear how 24M plans to address design defects. In modern batteries, defects can often be isolated to a single cell without jeopardizing the entire pack. In a fully sealed electrode pack, how would defects be diagnosed? Additionally, the inactive materials in traditional batteries also provide room for thermal management, as temperature regulation is crucial to performance and longevity.
Still, the company’s strategy of competing with China through innovation and disruptive technology makes sense. Asian companies are far ahead in both battery technology and the supply chains that support it. For the U.S. to gain any meaningful edge in competitiveness, it would need methods designed, developed and manufactured domestically at scale, tailored for American consumers. Without that, competition with companies like CATL and BYD would forever be out of reach.
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