Nissan says it is overcoming solid-state EV battery challenges
Proper now, Nissan is getting only its 1st ways towards that objective, with a feasibility analyze laboratory in which it is experimenting with the batteries in handmade, restricted-run batches. But if all goes to program, the little-scale, secretive workshop will lead to a pilot plant launch in 2024 and to mass-scale producing in 2028.
Nissan is grappling with this crucial new technological know-how as a host of startups and almost each aged-faculty rival, from Toyota and Volkswagen to Standard Motors, race to locate the right road to good results.
A peek inside Nissan’s laboratory reveals just how long and arduous the highway to reliable point out will be.
The 1,400-square-foot workshop is a walled-off dry area housed inside an old warehouse at Nissan’s Oppama manufacturing facility intricate wherever engineers at the time labored on prototyping new catalysts.
There, a group of 10 workers painstakingly mix an electrolyte slurry, scooping cathode powder from a plastic cup with a very long spoon, by hand. They combine it into an inky black goop, which is unfold like pancake combine on to thin aluminum sheets – only two cells at time.
Just after drying, the sheets go through a stamping equipment reminiscent of a phone booth that compresses them with 3 periods the stress used for normal lithium ion cells.
Personnel then slice the electrolyte sheets to an correct size and meticulously stack them with anode sheets. Last but not least, they vacuum-seal four-layer sets of cells into aluminum foil pouches.
The perform is fastidious and time consuming. The bulk of the procedures are carried out via plexiglass glove boxes to sustain ultralow humidity and cleanliness. Since the rooms are so dry, experts are required to choose hydration breaks each individual two hrs.
