Solid State Battery Market Trends

Growth Drivers

• Advancements in solid state batteries: Advancements in solid state battery technologies enable major enhancements in manufacturing methods, fueling large-scale production ability and reduced costs. Companies are focusing on full-scale manufacturing strategies to address rising market requirements. For instance, in January 2024, ProLogium established its first giga-scale solid state battery manufacturing facility in Taoyuan, Taiwan. The production capacity of this plant is expected to produce 26,000 electric vehicles annually, with mass-scale production to commence from 2027. This development is highlighting the industry’s shift toward large-scale production for advanced energy storage solution manufacturing. The newly developed advanced manufacturing capabilities are driving automakers to collaborate with battery developers to improve production efficiency. The intensification of commercialization is driving stakeholders to work on key technical issues and production problems involved with the solid state batteries. Companies are significantly investing in solid electrolyte material optimization as well as enhancing interface compatibility while improving cell assembly procedures. Scaling up manufacturing operations and minimizing operational expenses depends on these innovations to ensure consistent performance with enhanced scalability. Solid state batteries demonstrate advanced potential as an energy solution, as manufacturers are initiating performance-enhancing developments that make them ideal for electric vehicles and complex electronic systems.
• Decreasing material costs: The decreasing costs of manufacturing raw materials required for solid state batteries are resulting in affordability due to advanced research and production advancements. Companies are developing novel material formulation methods and scalable production technologies to decrease their need for expensive or rare materials while enhancing their cell fabrication process and decreasing error rates. The advancements in active material utilization enable businesses to decrease the cost per kilowatt-hour. Industrial research initiatives are accelerating the development of low-cost solid electrolytes that maintain both high conductivity and thermal stability to lower overall costs. Production lines implementing solid state batteries are transitioning from pilot stages to commercial readiness, while these collaborations are resulting in cost competitiveness for these batteries. Solid state batteries are emerging as a transformational technology with the increasing demand for clean energy and the electrified transport transition.
• Miniaturization for consumer electronics and wearables: The demand for small, lightweight, high-capacity energy sources in the consumer electronics industry is growing. Solid-state batteries, offered as both thin-film and micro-batteries, meet this energy need. These batteries enable increasingly thinner designs in smartphones, laptops, medical devices, and wearables due to their ultra-high energy density, improved safety, and longer lifespan. While all manufacturers aim for higher performance and safety, solid-state batteries are increasingly viewed as the next power source and will help establish solid-state technologies in the consumer electronics market. Technological miniaturization advances include power-efficient design (35%) for reduced consumption and longer battery life, semiconductor technologies (40%) enabling smaller, faster transistors, and microfabrication (25%) delivering ultra-small, high-performance components through precise manufacturing for increasingly compact, efficient electronic devices.

Growing Battery Demand in the Market

Export and Import of Batteries in 2023

Source: OEC

Challenges

• Scale-up and mass production challenges: Transitioning from prototypes built at the lab-scale to gigafactory-scale production is complicated. Solid-state cell assembly involves new manufacturing equipment, cleanroom standards, and processes that are not compatible with today’s lithium-ion production lines. Constructing new facilities or retrofitting existing facilities will require billions in capital investment and a long timeline. In addition, quality control on solid layers and interfaces will be more stringent than for liquid cells. Until there are proven production methods that can be scaled to high volumes, meeting the demand for electric vehicles and grid storage will still be a critical challenge.
• Material challenges: The advancement of solid state batteries is facing substantial barriers due to material-related issues. The solid electrolytes and electrodes need to provide high ionic conductance properties as well as stability characteristics to operate properly at industrial scales. The search for suitable materials that can deliver these properties at affordable costs is facing difficulties. The high conductivity of solid electrolytes, such as sulfides or oxides, comes with stability or manufacturing challenges that restrict their use. The expense of high-performance materials remains high, which is obstructing the development of commercial-grade solid state batteries with reliable affordability, therefore hindering their market deployment.