Our Next Energy (ONE), a Michigan-based energy storage company, unveiled a 240-Ah prismatic anode-free cell after a successful 12-month R&D effort. The company believes its anode-free cell is the highest energy density large-format cell ever produced. The breakthrough technology will enable the commercialization of ONE’s GeminiTM dual-chemistry architecture, which will be integrated into a BMW iX prototype vehicle later this year.
ONE’s first-generation 1007 Wh/L cell eliminates the need for graphite and anode manufacturing equipment, enabling $50 per kWh cell cost at scale. “Our prismatic anode-free cell is produced with approximately half of current cell manufacturing equipment for equivalent capacity, allowing us to sharply reduce scale-up cost,” said Mujeeb Ijaz, founder and CEO of ONE.
Anode-free cells typically have low cycle life compared to conventional cells, which has not made them viable in an automotive setting. ONE’s Gemini dual-chemistry architecture has opened a straightforward path to widespread use of anode-free cells by reducing cycle and peak power requirements by 90%. Gemini pairs more standardized LFP and anode-free chemistries into one battery pack, enabled by the company’s proprietary DC-DC converter. This allows each specialty chemistry to focus on different functions: LFP for daily driving, and anode-free to extend range for long distances. This combined system is expected to deliver more than 250,000 miles of lifetime service.
“Scaling 100x from a 2 Ah pouch cell to a 240 Ah prismatic in less than 12 months is a testament to the simplicity of the design and ability to use conventional Li-ion production equipment,” said Steven Kaye, ONE Chief Technical Officer. “We are moving faster than the fastest research programs that I have been a part of. Gemini will reach volume production in 2026 accelerating electric vehicle adoption by delivering 600 miles of range in a wide range of vehicle platforms, including trucks and SVUs.”
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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This is exciting news. I knew once we seriously started looking at battery tech for transportation, the advancements would mirror computer processor evolution.
So…. they solved the cycling problem by not cycling the anode-free cell.
That works for anyone who charges daily and does occasional long trips. If you use a big battery to just charge once or twice a week, not so much.
That was my reaction, too; This isn’t a great cheap battery. It’s a great expensive battery joined at the hip to a not so great cheap battery, so they can pretend it’s great AND cheap. But it’s only great to the extent it’s not cheap, (It’s horribly over-priced if you only take short trips.) and cheap to the extent it’s not great. (The life sucks if you regularly have a long commute.) And what if they get the mix between expensive good battery and cheap lousy battery wrong? Not everybody has the same driving style.
If that’s what you’re going to do, why not put the seldom used secondary power source on a trailer, instead of dragging it around all the time? It would be much more energy efficient, are they actually calculating into the battery efficiency the fact that it’s being dragged around on those short trips doing nothing? 99% of the time the new battery chemistry is dead weight!
That’s the actual, rational solution, if you’re going to do electric cars: Enough battery to get through 95-99% of the trips, (This will vary from person to person, it’s an option, and a secondary power trailer for the long trips. Maybe you keep it at home as a backup source for your freezer. Maybe you rent it when you need it. Your car is getting seriously low on an unanticipated trip? They meet you with a topped off trailer, instead of a tow truck.
With enough self-driving mojo, such trailers could be automatically dispatched, even, and dock with your car on the highway, and you could drive 24/7 if needed.
I feel like the electric car people have a conceptual blind spot here.
$/kWh is good and loudly proclaimed.
kWh/L is good and loudly proclaimed
kWh/kg is …. kept secret.
Kwh/kg is not problem for EV if $/kwh is low enough. Heavier car is safer one.
“Heavier car is safer one.”
That might be true in the sense that the driver or passenger is likely to be less badly damaged in a crash, however, a heavier car will do more damage to whatever or whoever it hits.
And…the reason that heavier car might have gotten into that mishap in the first place, is because of its horrible handling and braking capabilities, courtesy of its excessive weight, when compared to a lighter, more athletic car.
If center of mass is very low then such a heavy car will handle better than average.
A low COG handles transitions well, and allows drama-less redirections in a light car. Start increasing the mass, and you get ‘pig wallowing’*. No magic will save you on the braking department either. Famed car designer Colin Chapman was correct. If you want the pinnacle of performance (and active safety), add ‘lightness’.
*a funny, very untechnical term used by one of my track instructors
A long time pet peeve of mine. I’m amazed insurance companies don’t recognize heavier vehicles as creating a higher probability of losses—both in terms of medical payments and property payments.
Insurance companies don’t have to calculate that a heavier vehicle has a higher probability of losses. They measure the losses directly. They know perfectly well how much that particular model cost to insure in the past, and give their premiums based on that.
So a vehicle that has shown a higher probability of causing more injury and death should be bloody high to insure, no? To cover the certain future losses, right?
Last fall I got rear ended on a highway, the exit lane had backed up into the regular lane. I stopped at the end of the line, the guy behind me was texting, and hit me full speed.
Fortunately for me, I’d looked back, seen him coming, and was already yanking over the steering while and hitting the gas when he hit me, so I got thrown onto the median, instead of becoming the filling in a car sandwich. Also fortunately for me, I was driving a fairly heavy SUV, and he was driving a compact. (With, thankfully, good airbags!)
So my car was still driveable, needed a new bumper and some other hardware on the back end, but it was fairly cheap to fix, though I spent the rest of my vacation mildly concussed with my wife driving. His was totaled.
From your reasoning, my insurance should have been a lot more expensive than his, because the weight of my car caused his to be totaled. From the insurance company’s perspective? Quite the contrary: The heavy car hadn’t been badly damaged, and the other guy’s insurance had to foot most of the bill on account of the police report making it clear he’d been at fault. (He was almost weeping, he confessed to the cops without even being asked.)
Insurance companies care about causation, but not in quite the manner you do, obviously.
E=1/2 mv^2. A heavier car means wasted energy. Wasted energy means a shorter range.
Kinetic energy is not by itself a loss; it takes more energy to get up to speed, but it doesn’t translate directly to a loss. The loss is friction against air (proportional to speed cubed; completely dominates at highway speeds), rolling resistance(generally greater at higher weight, directly proportional to speed + some fudge-factor for speed squared that depends on tire pressure).
Losses from higher kinetic energy are only due to non-regenerative breaking and wheel friction. E.g. if you roll from 110 km/h to 70 km/h without hitting the break and let air friction reduce the velocity, then you’ve lost no energy due to having a greater kinetic energy.
A heavy vehicle will mostly be disadvantageous in inner-city start-stop driving due to greater rolling friction and the extent to which regenerative breaking can’t be used.
If that price holds at the consumer level, and if the packaging was possible, I’m looking at a $1125 replacement battery for my old EV.
Framed that way, not so bad!
Still … snake oil.
They don’t apparently have a 1 kWh/kg prismatic battery.
They don’t have any battery for near $50/kWh.
And the picture of the yellow prism-mockup isn’t a 2 pole battery.
The front ‘-ode’ (cathode, anode, you choose) is 1/2 of a full battery. Is the other end similarly configured (if so, I take it all back), but since there are 2 undersized screw connectors on one single metallic looking ‘-ode’, well … not much of a battery.
Anyway. The goat must speak.
Look, I suspect that’s a mock-up, too, but I doubt they made as basic a mistake as not having two terminals. Actually, 3 or more.
Stupid to combine the two chemistries in one battery, anyway, when they have different lifespans. You take a few long trips, or skip the overnight charge too often, and you’re junking the expensive part of the battery that has lots of life left, along with the cheap part that’s semi-expendable.
You’d have two separate battery packs, with provisions for swapping them out separately. If doing this made sense.
You’d only package them together to pretend they were one cheap, good battery. If they were snake oil, as you say.
IMO the two different battery packs is rather workable and clever. We have batteries with high cycle life and low energy density *today* and we have batteries with low cycle life and high energy density *today*. Take a vehicle like the RAV4 Prime and replace the weight and volume of the gas drivetrain with a high energy density battery. That could be a very practical and workable vehicle.