For real solid state

[CUDA]

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/09/b...e-battery.html



Dozens of companies are trying to mass-produce solid-state cells, including big carmakers like Toyota and smaller ones like QuantumScape, a Silicon Valley start-up backed by Volkswagen. Mercedes, hedging its bets, is also working with ProLogium, a Taiwanese company.



Every company has its own closely guarded recipes and manufacturing processes. “It’s difficult to say which technology will win,” said Xiaoxi He, a technology analyst at IDTechEx, a research firm.


Many start-ups have produced solid-state battery prototypes. But Factorial appears to be the first to have put one into a production vehicle and tested it on the street.Credit...Felix Schmitt for The New York Times
In the beginning, Factorial’s prototype assembly line in South Korea had a yield of just 10 percent, meaning 90 percent of its batteries were faulty. Despite her preference for a good night’s sleep, Ms. Huang often had to wake up at 4 a.m. to deal with problems at the factory, which was operating around the clock. She was in South Korea at least once a month.

“There were always issues,” she said. “There was a point, I was like, I don’t even know if we can make it.”

By 2023, Factorial had produced enough cells suitable for an automobile that Mr. Keller, a soft-spoken, amiable man who has worked at Mercedes for 25 years, began thinking about installing them in a car. The cost and the risk of failure were high enough that he sought approval from his bosses. Armed with PowerPoint slides, Mr. Keller went to Ola Källenius, an imposing Swede who is chief executive at Mercedes.



Ms. Huang was a bit surprised when, in late 2023, Mr. Keller told her that Mercedes wanted to put the cells in a working vehicle. “We didn’t realize it was coming so soon, honestly speaking,” she said with a laugh.

But by June 2024, Factorial had managed to produce enough high-quality cells to announce that it had begun delivering them to Mercedes. In November, the factory in South Korea hit 85 percent yield, the best result yet. Ms. Huang and the Korean team celebrated by going out to a barbecue joint.

Mercedes still had to figure out how to package the cells in a way that would protect them from highway dirt and moisture. And it had to integrate the battery pack into a vehicle, connecting it to the car’s control systems.

The Factorial cells had one big drawback that made them hard to install in a car. They expanded when charged and shrank when discharged. In Mr. Keller’s words, they “breathed.”


Mr. Keller turned to engineers on the Mercedes Formula 1 racing team, who are accustomed to quickly solving technical problems. They devised a mechanism that expanded and shrank with the cells, maintaining constant pressure.

Several weeks later, the Mercedes engineers took the car with Factorial’s battery, an otherwise standard EQS electric sedan, to a company track for its first road test.


The engineers drove the car slowly at first. They carefully monitored technical data displayed on the dashboard screen.

They drove faster and faster until, by the fourth day, they reached autobahn speeds of 100 miles per hour. The battery didn’t blow up. In theory, it can power the car for 600 miles, more than most conventional cars can travel on a tank of gasoline.

[CUDA]

https://www.topspeed.com/mercedes-battery-breakthrough/