Solid state of affairs as VW hits battery milestone

Solid-state batteries are seen as the power reserve of the future as they are safer, charge quicker and can cover longer ranges on a single charge than current lithium-ion batteries.

It means an electric car could drive more than 500,000km without any noticeable loss of range – tests showed just a 5pc reduction in range over that distance.

The tests were carried out in the laboratories of PowerCo SE which is the Volkswagen group’s battery company.

The results are being described as a milestone on the way to series production of the solid-state cell battery.

US firm QuantumScape recently reached an important breakthrough – which has now been confirmed by Volkswagen’s PowerCo – in that its solid-state cell has significantly exceeded the requirements and successfully completed more than 1,000 charging cycles.

For an electric car with a WLTP range of 500kms-600kms, that corresponds to a total mileage of more than half a million kilometres.

Executives at the firms acknowledge that while there is a lot more work to do to bring this technology to market, they are not aware of “any other automotive-format lithium-metal battery that has shown such high discharge energy retention over a comparable cycle count under similar conditions”.

PowerCo and Volkswagen are pushing hard to bring the technology to market as quickly as possible.

Robert Guy, director of group after-sales for Volkswagen Group Ireland, said: “While this is an exciting breakthrough for automotive innovation, it is still a way to go until solid-state battery technology can be scaled up to the levels required for series production.”