Why This Ultra Cheap Battery Breakthrough Matters

Solid-state batteries could address some of the biggest issues facing energy storage and EVs; safety, charge capacity, and longevity. But the biggest problem they face? Cost.
You can probably see why my interest was piqued when I heard about a new electrode manufacturing technique that apparently uses less energy, less materials, and less factory floor space — all of which means more savings. Plus, researchers have found a new cathode material that works just as well as lithium iron phosphate, but costs only 1 or 2% of its price, potentially knocking 50 to 60% off the cost of a finished battery. That’s right, 50 to 60% off the entire battery’s price.
How are these massive savings even possible? And could these innovations realistically dethrone current manufacturing methods and battery materials?

Battery Price Wars

You may have noticed that battery prices are already falling. China’s two largest battery suppliers, CATL and BYD, are in a full-blown price war after ramping up production in 2022, right before EV sales unexpectedly fell in 2023. In early 2024, CATL announced plans to push prices 50% lower to undercut its competitor.¹ Although, Goldman Sachs expects a 50% price drop isn’t likely until 2026.²

If that price drop does happen, Goldman Sachs predicts EVs may finally reach price parity with traditional internal combustion engine cars.² But this isn’t just about EVs, these dropping prices will impact everything including home batteries, grid scale energy storage systems, and eventually the phone you’re probably using to watch this video.¹ The ultimate goal is to make these technologies accessible to everyone.

And to get there, manufacturing and materials costs are going to have to drop even further. Let’s cover a couple of the things that will get us there. First is a new manufacturing technique entering production now that will lower one of the most costly parts of a battery: their electrodes.

Dry-Printing Battery Electrodes

The California-based battery technology firm Sakuu is beginning to license Kavian, the world’s first platform for 3D-printing battery electrodes. Both the cathode, that donates ions during charging, and the anode, that accepts them, will be 3D printed on the Kavian platform.

Electrodes are traditionally manufactured in a “wet” process: cathode or anode materials are mixed with toxic solvents like NMP (N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone) to create a slurry. This is coated onto metal foils — copper for the anode and aluminum for the cathode — and then dried in an oven to evaporate the solvent.³ This means energy is used to heat the ovens and to capture and recycle that toxic solvent. All of this requires equipment with huge factory footprints. We’re talking about 80-meter (or 262.5 feet) long equipment that can be several stories high.³

Sakuu’s Kavian platform only occupies a small footprint in comparison, at just 15-20 meters (or about 49 to 65 feet) long. They can efficiently manufacture electrodes with their “dry” process that doesn’t use solvents or an oven. Dry electrode powder is 3D-printed onto foils at the desired thickness, conditioned, and then inspected.⁴³ If a batch of electrode fails the quality check, it’s straightforward to recover the expensive electrode materials and try again, unlike with a wet manufacturing process.³

These material and space efficiencies add up: according to Sakuu, its dry-printing platform requires less capital investment at start up, uses 30% less factory floor space, and 25% less labor. The company claims it eliminates those toxic solvents, wastes less water, and uses a third less energy in comparison to wet electrode manufacturing.³⁵ It likely also saves on the expended solvent disposal costs. That’s a lot of savings to be passed on to the consumer, especially if those battery price wars continue. Fingers crossed.

You’re probably wondering, though: what kind of batteries are we talking about? Nickel? Cobalt? Lithium? And the answer is “yes.” Throw aluminum and sodium onto that list, too. Sakuu says that dry-printing can be adapted to a lot of different cathode and anode materials, whether they’ll be used with a liquid or solid electrolyte. What I find the most interesting is that the dry-printing technology could open up even more options: denser electrodes, multi-layered electrodes, and electrodes made from materials that weren’t compatible with wet processes … so haven’t really been explored yet.

By eliminating the slurry and 3D-printing the electrode, these batteries can easily take on any shape. This dry-printing method allows for custom designs that fit seamlessly into products, like an e-bike frame, maximizing battery size without wasting space, even in unusual shapes. Now, instead of building a phone around a battery pack, a battery could be built around the other components in the phone, giving small electronics the most oomph possible in a tiny package. 3D printing also allows for more geometric flexibility in designs, which allows for more electrode surface area. With such a novel technique more research can be conducted to optimize electrode shape.

Knowing all that, it’s unsurprising that Sakuu’s Kavian Platform has been named to TIME’s list of the “Best Inventions of 2024.”⁵ But invention is only the first step. We’re looking for technologies that are roll-out ready.

That’s why Sakuu is partnering with two established battery makers to take its Kavian platform into the industrial space, with hopes of more partnerships and licenses in the future. SK On, the world’s fifth largest battery manufacturer with headquarters in South Korea and additional production facilities in the US, is beginning a joint development project with Sakuu to perfect their dry-printing technology for industrial-scale operations.³ Sakuu is also partnering with Quebec-based ELEQTRION as it scales up the production of its aluminum-ion based batteries for incorporation into grid systems, showing just how versatile the Kavian platform is for a variety of electrode materials.⁶

Sakuu isn’t the only company launching dry electrode manufacturing, either. Tesla is beginning to incorporate dry-coated electrodes into its latest and greatest battery pack, the 4680⁷; and AM Batteries just shipped its first rolls of nickel-manganese-cobalt electrodes made with its own dry-coating method to a major battery cell provider for performance validation.⁸

Trimming Materials to Trim Costs

After fine-tuning the assembly line, it’s time to nickel-and-dime (and maybe even penny) those material costs … because there are some insane savings at play here.

Right now, electrodes are applied onto cheap aluminum and expensive copper foils, which act as current collectors allowing electricity to flow in and out of the battery. But copper is so pricey that even pennies had to downsize — since the 1980s, they’ve been made with a thin copper coating over zinc. And let’s face it, when pennies are pinching pennies, you know it’s time to rethink copper in batteries.

Although it’s still in the experimental phase and far from commercial deployment, Sakuu is exploring a couple ways to drop the expense and the weight from current collectors. The company is developing battery cells without current-collecting copper and aluminum foils on the outside, or even tabs for the negative and positive terminals. Instead, individual cells can be stacked up to create high voltage batteries that only have metal foils at their outermost edges. This reduces battery materials, weight, and cost even more.⁹

Instead of metal foils, Sakuu is pivoting towards composite current collectors, which are typically polymers engineered with conductive additives to boost their conductivity while reducing overall weight. Switching from metals to cheap polymer composites could potentially drop the cost of current collectors by 75%. And assuming about 10% of the price of a battery is its current collectors, that’s a whopping 7.5% potential price drop for future batteries.¹⁰¹¹ Polymer-based current collectors also offer peace of mind for anyone haunted by viral videos of lithium battery fires — they can be fire-retardant, helping to suppress thermal runaway and reduce ignition risk.

With advancements in battery cost, weight, and safety, it’s no surprise that composite current collectors are a growing focus of innovation. At the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, researchers recently unveiled a metal-free current collector for graphite anodes. Crafted from carbon fibers and nanotubes embedded in a polymer matrix, their composite current collector had better charge transfer and faster charging speeds than traditional copper foil.¹¹¹² The race is on to develop polymer-based current collectors optimized for each battery type. To succeed, they’ll need to at least match the performance of copper foil and demonstrate durability across thousands of charge-discharge cycles.

The urgency couldn’t be greater. The International Energy Agency warns that if nations are on track to meet their climate targets, global copper production will only satisfy 70% of projected demand by 2035. Even more concerning, global lithium mining is projected to meet only 50% of demand by 2035. The rock-bottom prices we enjoy for lithium-ion batteries today could rebound sharply within the next decade unless we develop alternative cathode materials that match lithium’s energy density. But there’s also progress happening right now to diversify the lithium supply chain and make it more affordable too … that’s a separate video.

Cheaper, More Plentiful Materials

I call out the cathode because it’s the MVP of battery performance: it impacts capacity, energy density, and lifespan while also tipping the scales as the heaviest component.¹³ That’s why the R&D is so heavy on cathodes in comparison to the anode or electrolyte.

Hailong Chen and his research team at the Georgia Institute of Technology, AKA Georgia Tech, in Atlanta are unleashing the potential of a cathode material you’ve probably never heard of: iron trichloride (FeCl₃).¹⁴ Chlorides hadn’t previously been viable as cathode materials because they dissolve in the liquid electrolytes used in traditional LIBs. But with solid-state technologies on the horizon, researchers revisited this cheap material, with priceless results.

Small-scale iron trichloride batteries built in Chen’s laboratory outperformed the cheapest commercially available lithium cathode material, lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO₄ or LFP). Despite a slightly lower specific capacity — 159 mAh per gram compared to LFP’s 170 mAh per gram — the iron trichloride cathode delivered a higher voltage of 3.65 volts versus 3.4 volts. This combination resulted in a superior energy density of 558 Wh per kg, exceeding the typical range of LFP batteries, which falls between 420 and 550 Wh per kg.¹⁴

The real question is, “does this cathode chemistry stand the test of time?” Their iron trichloride battery retained 83% of its initial capacity after 1,000 cycles with an impressive efficiency of 99.95%.¹⁴ That’s comparable to many commercial lithium-ion batteries using cobalt and manganese, but it falls short of the 2,000+ cycles above 80% capacity typically offered by LFP batteries.¹⁵ Still, for an early-stage design, it’s an impressive result. With further development and optimization, iron trichloride battery longevity may well match that of LFP. And if it does, it’ll deliver better long-term performance at a lower price point.

So, how did they slash costs? Unlike cobalt and nickel, which are difficult and expensive to extract, iron and chloride are among the most abundantly available elements on Earth. Iron is mined in vast quantities for steel production, or recycled from scrap steel, while chloride is easily extracted from brines and other salt sources. Together, they’re sustainable, plentiful, and incredibly cheap: ideal ingredients for driving down battery costs.

In fact, an iron trichloride cathode is just 1% the cost of an lithium cobalt oxide (LiCoO2 or LCO) cathode and 2% the cost of an LFP cathode.¹⁴ Even with the added cost of the lithium anode required by the iron trichloride cathode, Chen’s team estimates that the total cost of the battery system could drop from the current $120–$150 per kWh for LIB cells to just $50–$80 per kWh. If that’s true once this leaves the lab, it would represent a savings of 50 to 60%.

Those are the kinds of price drops that might bring EVs and home energy storage within reach for most people. Those are the kinds of cost cuts that could speed the transition away from internal combustion engines and towards cleaner, more sustainable electric motors.

However, we may be waiting a while longer. These technologies, which eliminate lithium from the cathode and ditch copper from the current collectors, are still stuck in R&D and likely five or more years away from commercialization. With the rollout of iron trichloride cathodes hinging on solid-state technologies, their market debut could end up solid-late. As dry electrode manufacture enters its commercial phase, we’ll hopefully see consistent price drops for lithium-ion batteries, even if the price war starts to cool.

Because, well, that’s the thing about game-changing innovation: it’s not usually the flashy breakthroughs that make it happen. Instead, it’s the practical advances like smarter materials, streamlined designs, and more efficient manufacturing. By focusing on abundant resources and cutting energy inputs, these technologies don’t just slash costs, but pay off their carbon debt faster, too. In the end, it’s a win for your wallet and the environment. Now that’s a greener future we can all plug into.