For several years, solid-state batteries have been like the stars at night. For various reasons, SSBs just never seem ready to leave the laboratory. However, Honda has come up with a small but crucial design change that could finally push solid-state batteries out of the research center and onto the pavement: inner protective layers. This may put an end to dendrites, a problem that has beset solid-state batteries for years. Honda claims that its SSBs can last 500,000 miles before they are finally exhausted.
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In order to give you the most up-to-date and accurate information possible, the data used to compile this article was sourced from various manufacturer websites and other authoritative sources, including MIT, MotorTrend, Edmunds, and Car and Driver.
Honda May Have Eliminated Dendrites
- Honda puts a protective barrier inside the battery where dendrites form.
- This could prevent one of the most common reasons why SSBs reach end-of-life.
When it comes to one of the most persistent problems in solid-state batteries, Honda has found a solution so basic that it almost shouldn’t work: put protective coverings over the problem areas inside the battery. To be a little more precise, Honda has put polymer layers over the electrodes in the battery to prevent tiny crystals called dendrites from forming. While nothing has managed to hit the road yet, preliminary tests are promising enough to justify an enthusiastic volley of press releases.
Dendrites: A Short Overview
To put it into very simplified terms, if a solid-state battery uses lithium, the metal can separate out from the electrolyte in which it is suspended and form crystals called dendrites on the battery’s electrodes (the points where the stored energy gets sent out of the battery).
Under a microscope, the dendrites look like small spiny trees. These crystals can start puncturing the various layers within the battery. Since the dendrites are made of metal, electricity can jump through them, going places where it shouldn’t. In other words, the battery can short-circuit itself from within.
While scientists aren’t precisely certain how dendrites form, the crystals don’t spontaneously generate throughout the electrolyte contained in the battery. Instead, they only form on the electrodes as the battery ages. The electrodes tend to form tiny little cracks (the term “microfissures” pops up a lot) after the battery is repeatedly drained and recharged. This is because the electrodes, like literally anything made of metal, expand and contract with temperature changes. Like trees sprouting from cracks in concrete, the dendrites form in the electrodes’ age-related fissures.
While dendrites aren’t the only reason a solid-state battery might reach the end of its useful life, they are one of the more common causes of death. Preventing dendrites would make solid-state batteries last a lot longer, even if scientists did nothing else to improve them.
Honda’s Solution To A Persistent Battery Problem
Honda’s battery design puts a polymer layer between the electrode and the electrolyte. Electricity passes through this protective barrier, but nothing else. If the electrolyte never touches the electrode, there is no place for the crystals to take root. In theory, the battery’s electrode can get as many fissures as it wants. They will all remain dendrite-free.
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Honda’s Unrealized EV Potential
- Honda continues to sell small cars, while American companies have given up.
- Honda’s reputation for reliability will give it an early sales boost when it makes its first big attempts to develop an EV lineup.
- Because Honda is known for both dependable and sporty cars (most companies stick to one or the other), it has a double advantage when it introduces a solid-state battery.
Honda’s always-impressive sales figures continuously disprove the claims from the American Big Three that “Americans don’t buy cars anymore.” While Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis have pivoted to SUVs, Honda can barely crank out Civics and Accords fast enough. Now that Honda (together with other Asian manufacturers) has essentially superseded American companies when it comes to selling sedans, the Japanese automaker may take over the growing EV market as well. An EV with a lifelong battery would be hard to compete with.
Honda’s Reputation Would Make EV Sales Easier
While Toyota is the undisputed leader of reliable Japanese cars, Honda has always been a respectably close second. Honda’s vehicles are consistently praised for their longevity. Like Toyota, this long history of dependable vehicles gives Honda a lot of leeway in what it can successfully sell to the public. People are more willing to trust unfamiliar technology when it comes from a manufacturer whose cars never die. Honda’s reputation also helps make part sales pitch before anyone has actually seen the vehicle.
All of this is to say that Honda’s name does half the sales pitch for it. If Honda starts putting out EVs with as-yet-unused solid-state batteries, the barrier of consumer skepticism will be trivial or nonexistent.
The Formidable Threat Of EVs That Are Both Sporty And Dependable
Honda has long maintained a double reputation as a manufacturer of steadfast cars and also of easily-modified sleepers. No other automaker has managed to straddle both sides of the sporty-versus-reliable divide as successfully and profitably as Honda has.
When it finally makes a serious entry into the EV market instead of selling a single paint-by-numbers SUV, its longstanding reputation will make it formidable competition even to the current standard-bearer Tesla. For now, the rest of the auto industry has a reprieve. Honda’s electric dreams seem to be tied to the solid-state battery that is not yet ready for the road.
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The Ongoing Allure Of Solid-State Batteries
- Solid-state batteries have many advantages over the lithium-ion batteries currently in use.
- Many other car companies are trying to develop them.
- Toyota has been working on SSBs for years.
Solid-state batteries remain a long-cherished wish of the automotive industry. To hear some people talk about it at press conferences, one might think SSBs would solve every problem that has ever occurred on four wheels. They weigh less than conventional EV batteries, charge faster, last longer (dendrites notwithstanding), and may even be cheaper to manufacture. However, making them roadworthy has proven to be notoriously difficult.
This is not to say that solid-state batteries are a useless technology. However, until the auto industry started poking at them, SSBs were only used in very small devices (pacemakers, RFIDs, hearing aids, wearable technology, etc). A lot of the batteries’ shortcomings only become near-insurmountable when attempting to make comparatively gargantuan ones.
Honda Vs. Toyota: Rivals In Reliability And In Solid-State Batteries
Of course, no discussion of automotive solid-state batteries is complete without noting Toyota’s long efforts to make them happen. (Indeed, it sometimes seems like Toyota is waiting for its solid-state batteries before it makes any EV besides the bZ4X SUV). The undisputed leader in Japanese automotive dependability has been working on SSBs for over a decade. However, despite its many battery-related patents, Toyota has shown very few results from its long (and still ongoing) research efforts.
It’s possible to speculate that Toyota is waiting until its battery is perfected, its factories set up, and the first shipments of SSBs are dispatched before making any big announcements. But as entertaining as such idle thoughts may be, the fact remains that Toyota stands to suffer a PR embarrassment if Honda (or anyone else) beats it to the solid-state finish line.
The Rest Of The Auto Industry Is Going Solid-State
Of course, Honda and Toyota are nowhere near the only companies dabbling in solid-state batteries. Most of the major companies in the auto industry have also decided to pursue them. It seems like these days, anyone can throw together a battery startup and attract automotive executives with blank checks and partnership offers.
Despite the tight competition, Honda is the only company to announce a solution for dendrites. This gives the company an edge in the solid-state competition. However, given that no one has managed to put a solid-state battery into a production car, that advantage may prove short-lived and ultimately worthless.
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The Long Road To Solid-State Batteries
If Honda’s own press releases are to be believed, the company is set to completely change EV batteries. It’s difficult to imagine, but the ongoing worries about EV battery lifespans and replacement could become as outdated as cars with choke knobs on the dashboard. Those are some grand promises (even by self-promotion standards), so a bit of skepticism is in order. However, a bit of optimism would not be out of place.
Years (Or Decades) Of Research Does Not Guarantee Success
Solid-state batteries are not the first time the auto industry has spent so long pursuing a technology with so little to show for it; so far. Chrysler famously spent over twenty years trying to make a turbine-powered car, and never got beyond producing a small fleet of test models.
Although it was quite impressive when, at a promotional event, company executives showed that the turbine could run on anything by mounting one on a stand and pouring French perfume into it. And of course, one would be remiss not to mention Mazda’s on-and-off-again flirtations with the rotary engine, which has so far only made it into a very few models targeted specifically at rotary engine enthusiasts.
Like so many technologies that seemed exciting at first, solid-state batteries have accrued a lot of enthusiastic press (and a faithful flock of naysayers). But as promising as they seem at this early stage, no technology is proven until it is put to use.
Honda’s Potentially Lucrative Solid-State Future
It is entirely possible that solid-state batteries may join hydrogen combustion engines among the technologies that started well but sputtered out. However, if they do take off, Honda has some of the most promising ones out there. No one else has managed to make the same extraordinary claims of battery longevity.
The automaker has a long and profitable history of supplying other companies with engines for all manner of uses that have nothing to do with cars (or any other form of transportation). If Honda succeeds with solid-state batteries, it may be able to take a similar (and similarly lucrative) approach to selling them. And, of course, other car manufacturers may want Honda’s batteries too. If the R&D comes together, Honda’s future is full of money.
