Electric vehicle batteries have gotten remarkably better and cheaper over the last decade as cleaner cars have exploded in popularity. Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe thinks there’s still room for improvement.
During an interview on this week’s Plugged-In Podcast, Scaringe told InsideEVs that his startup’s main focus right now on the battery front is making EVs charge faster without sacrificing range. Shorter public charging stops would make owning an EV far more convenient, especially for road trips and people who can’t charge at home. But it’s a tougher nut to crack than you might think.
Faster charging generally is at odds with a cell’s energy density, as Scaringe explains. In other words, you can make a battery that charges lightning-quick, but it may not hold very much energy, resulting in an EV that can’t go as far. That’s part of why it takes anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes to add a significant charge to most EVs in America.
“We try to find the right balance on those. But we’re increasingly focusing on fast charging without losing energy density as we’ve known it thus far,” Scaringe said.
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Chinese firms have been at the forefront of fast-charging power. BYD made waves earlier this year when it unveiled cars that can charge at 1,000 kilowatts, 3-4 times the power that most American EVs can accept. What was largely overlooked, though, is that those BYD cars don’t offer much range.
The other challenge with boosting fast-charging capability, Rivian’s CEO said, is that it deals a blow to a battery’s longevity.
“We can fast-charge really quickly, but you kill the durability of the cell,” he said. “Over the course of, let’s say, 1,000 charge cycles, you could lose 20, 25% of the original capacity of the cell.”
Rivian CEO R.J. Scaringe said his company is focusing on making batteries that charge faster, without harming energy capacity.
Photo by: Patrick George
Rivian is exploring chemistry tweaks like silicon anodes and “dialing and targeting those toward fast charge,” Scaringe told us. It’s also implementing packaging improvements that can make its batteries more cost-effective, which is key since batteries are the single most expensive component of any EV.
For example, Rivian’s upcoming R2 crossover uses much larger cells than its first-generation R1S and R1T—and those cells are assembled in a single layer rather than a double-decker stack. The new pack also doubles as a structural part of the car. Scaringe says all of this has cut “a tremendous amount of cost out.”
“Just think about the cost of a battery. Everything other than the chemistry is overhead that’s there to hold the chemistry and connect it all together so it’s not adding value,” he said.
What about brand-new chemistries like solid state, often hailed as a holy grail battery technology? We asked Scaringe about that too.
“I think there’s a lot of noise in solid state around commercial readiness that’s maybe an exaggeration of reality,” he said. Many battery companies and automakers have been working on solid-state batteries for years—cells that trade a liquid electrolyte for a solid one—but none have achieved full-scale production.
Rivian’s CEO spoke about advancements to the R2 crossover’s batteries on the Plugged-In Podcast. Photo by: InsideEVs
And, to Scaringe and his battery team, a new battery technology is only really worth its sodium if it can be mass produced reliably.
“You’re seeing polymer-based batteries. There’s people that are looking at sodium. So there’s a whole host of different things being looked at, but the question is: Can they get to scale?” Scaringe said.
For now, Rivian’s CEO thinks the two chemistries that already dominate the EV landscape will remain the most important: Those are high-nickel cells and cheaper lithium-iron phosphate ones, known as LFP.
Rivian uses both across its EV lineup, and Scaringe lauded LFP for its hardiness and affordability. However, as LFP packs gain share across China and Europe, they probably won’t be much of a factor in the U.S. due to trade barriers, Scaringe said. China controls nearly the entire global supply of LFP.
“The United States, because of our trade relationships with China, has very, very low LFP penetration,” he said. “I think it will likely stay low in the United States, unless we see a shift in trade policy.”
Contact the author: Tim.Levin@InsideEVs.com
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