Every Type of EV Battery Explained

[00:00:00]Number one, lithium ion phosphate or LFP. Picture a battery that refuses to catch fire. Not because engineers added a safety system on top of it. Because the chemistry itself makes burning extraordinarily difficult.

[00:00:13]That is the first thing to understand about LFP. And it is the reason this battery type keeps forcing its way back into conversations that nickel richch chemistries thought they had already won.

[00:00:24]The cathode is lithium ion phosphate.

[00:00:27]The anode is graphite. The nominal cell voltage sits at around 3.2 volts.

[00:00:33]Noticeably lower than the 3.6 to 3.7 volts you get from nickel manganese cobalt cells. That voltage gap matters and we will come back to it. The critical structural fact is that the iron phosphate bond is extremely strong.

[00:00:47]When the cell overheats, that bond resists decomposition. It does not release oxygen the way nickel richch cathodess can. No oxygen means the runaway thermal chain reaction has nothing to feed on. The cell gets hot.

[00:00:59]It does not become a torch. Think of it this way. A nickel-rich lithium ion cell is a lightweight suitcase. It carries a lot, moves fast, and fits in tight spaces. An LFP cell is a heavy safe. It carries less for its size, but you are not worried about it falling apart.

[00:01:18]Tesla started fitting LFP chemistry into its standard range Model 3 and Model Y vehicles around 2021, sourcing cells from CL.

[00:01:28]BYD took the architecture further with the blade battery, a cellto pack design that eliminates the module layer entirely.

[00:01:36]Longer cells are stacked directly into the pack structure, recovering some of the space that low energy density would otherwise waste.

[00:01:44]BYD reported the blade passed a nail penetration test without fire or smoke.

[00:01:50]That is the test that has historically made engineers nervous about any lithium chemistry.

[00:01:55]The cycle life advantage is real and measurable. LFP cells routinely deliver 2,000 to 3,000 full charge cycles before hitting 80% capacity.

[00:02:07]Comparable nickelrich cells typically reach that threshold closer to 1,00 to,500 cycles. For a fleet vehicle or a taxi running two full charges per day, that gap is the difference between a 5-year pack and a 10-year pack. The weaknesses are not small. Energy density for LFP lands around 120 to 160 W hours per kilogram at the cell level. NMC can reach 200 to 300. In cold weather, LFP performance drops sharply. Internal resistance climbs. Regenerative braking becomes limited. Charging slows. Owners in northern climates noticed this fast.

[00:02:45]That cold weather behavior is exactly why several European and North American automakers have hesitated. Range anxiety on a January morning in Oslo or Minneapolis is a commercial problem, not just an engineering footnote. But here is the trade-off that keeps shifting the math. Cobalt prices are volatile. Iron and phosphate are not. Every time the nickel cobalt supply chain hiccups, LFP's cost advantage widens. And in 2024, that gap was not narrowing. Number two, nickel manganese cobalt or NMC.

[00:03:18]If LFP is the heavy safe, NMC is the lightweight suitcase. And for most of the 2010s, the entire EV industry was packing that suitcase as fast as it could manufacture cells.

[00:03:31]The cathode is a layered oxide. Lithium sits between layers of a transition metal oxide structure built from nickel, manganese, and cobalt in ratios that engineers can tune.

[00:03:42]That tunability is the first important thing. It is not one battery chemistry.

[00:03:47]It is a family of them. NMC 111 uses equal parts of all three metals. NMC 622 pushes nickel to 60% with 20% manganese and 20% cobalt. NMC 811 takes nickel to 80% and cuts cobalt to just 10%.

[00:04:07]Each ratio shifts the balance between energy density, stability, and cost in ways that matter enormously at the pack level. Here is the basic deal the chemistry is offering. Nickel is the primary contributor to energy density.

[00:04:21]More nickel means more lithium can be stored per unit volume. Manganesees stabilizes the crystal structure and holds thermal behavior in check. Cobalt improves conductivity and keeps the layered structure from collapsing during cycling.

[00:04:36]Take any one element too far and something breaks.

[00:04:40]Push nickel too high without compensation and the cathode becomes thermally unstable. The cell that holds more energy becomes the cell that is harder to keep safe.

[00:04:50]That trade-off sat at the center of every NMC engineering program for a decade.

[00:04:55]NMC became the dominant EV chemistry in Europe, China, and North America through the 20110s for a reason that sounds almost too simple. It worked well enough across every dimension that mattered commercially. Energy density at the cell level reached 200 to 280 W hours per kilogram, well above LFP.

[00:05:16]Cycle life was acceptable for consumer vehicles, typically 1,00 to,500 full cycles to 80% capacity. Cold weather performance was noticeably better than LFP and the supply chain scaled quickly because LG Chem, Samsung SDI, SK Innovation, and CL were all manufacturing NMC cells in volume by the mid2010s. GM's Chevrolet Bolt, launched in 2016, used an LG Chem NMC pack. It delivered 60 kW hours in a package that fit a compact crossover.

[00:05:49]BMW's i3 used NMC chemistry from the start, prioritizing the energy density that made a small pack viable in a small car.

[00:05:58]Volkswagen's MEB platform, which underpins the ID4 and its derivatives, was designed around NMC from the beginning. These were not marginal programs. They were flagship bets on a particular chemistry at a particular moment.

[00:06:13]The shift from NMC 111 to 622 to 811 was driven almost entirely by cobalt economics.

[00:06:23]Cobalt is mined primarily in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The supply chain is concentrated, politically complex, and price volatile.

[00:06:33]In 2018, cobalt spot prices spiked above $90,000 per metric ton. Every gram of cobalt in a cathode became a liability that procurement teams wanted off their balance sheets. NMC 811 cut cobalt content by roughly 60% compared to NMC 111. That was not a marginal improvement. That was a restructuring of the cost model. But NMC 811 introduced problems that NMC 111 did not have.

[00:07:04]Higher nickel content means the cathode surface reacts more aggressively with the electrolyte. Engineers found that NMC 811 cells required tighter formation protocols, better electrolyte additives, and more precise thermal management to achieve comparable cycle life. CATL and LG Chem both spent years refining coating techniques and electrolyte formulations to make 811 commercially viable.

[00:07:30]The thermal management systems in NMC packs are not optional engineering additions. They are loadbearing, remove active cooling and the chemistry degrades fast. That thermal sensitivity is the cost NMC pays for its energy density advantage. LFP can tolerate more thermal abuse. NMC cannot afford to. The battery management system in an NMC pack is doing constant work, monitoring cell temperatures, balancing charge, preventing the cathode from hitting conditions where structural degradation accelerates.

[00:08:04]So why does NMC remain dominant even as LFP expands into longer range segments and sodium ion sits on the horizon?

[00:08:12]Because 200 plus W hours per kilogram still matters. Every kilogram saved in the battery pack is either range added or weight subtracted from a vehicle that has to handle, stop, and fit in a parking garage. NMC gives engineers room that lower density chemistries do not.

[00:08:29]The open question is whether 811 represents the ceiling. Some researchers believe a nickel content above 90% is achievable with sufficient surface engineering. Others think the cathode stability problems compound faster than the energy gains justify.

[00:08:45]Nobody has resolved that yet. What is clear is that NMC got the EV industry to mass market. Everything competing with it is being measured against a standard it set.

[00:08:57]Number three, nickel cobalt aluminum or NCA.

[00:09:02]NMC tuned its chemistry by adjusting three metals in a layered oxide. NCA took a different approach. It kept the high nickel and cobalt, swapped manganese out entirely, and replaced it with a small amount of aluminum. That substitution sounds minor. It is not.

[00:09:18]Aluminum does not contribute to capacity the way nickel does. What it does is stabilize the cathode structure at high states of charge without the electrochemical penalty that manganese brings.

[00:09:30]The result is a cathode that can carry more lithium per unit volume than almost any other commercial oxide chemistry.

[00:09:38]NCA cells routinely hit 250 to 300 W hours per kilogram at the cell level.

[00:09:45]That is at the top of what lithium ion chemistry currently delivers in production at scale. The reason that number matters starts with a simple physics constraint. Energy density at the cell level is not the same as range at the vehicle level. Pack structure, thermal management hardware, power electronics, and structural integration all add mass that does not store energy.

[00:10:07]A chemistry that delivers 300 W hours per kilogram at the cell gives engineers more room to absorb those system level penalties without shrinking the range number on the window sticker.

[00:10:19]NCA bought Tesla headroom and Tesla used every bit of it. The Tesla and Panasonic partnership is the central NCA story.

[00:10:29]Panasonic had been developing NCA cells for consumer electronics through the 2000s. The format was small, cylindrical, and optimized for cameras and laptops.

[00:10:40]Tesla's insight, first applied in the original Roadster and then scaled aggressively in the Model S from 2012.

[00:10:47]That was that thousands of those small cylindrical cells wired together could power a car.

[00:10:54]The 18,650 cell format, 18 mm in diameter and 65 mm long, was not designed for automotive use.

[00:11:04]Tesla designed around it anyway.

[00:11:07]When the Nevada Gigafactory opened in 2016, the collaboration became a manufacturing story as much as a chemistry story.

[00:11:16]Panasonic built cells inside the same facility where Tesla assembled packs and vehicles. The integration was intentional. Supply chain compression at that scale allowed cell chemistry improvements to move into production faster than a conventional supplier relationship would allow.

[00:11:31]By 2017, the 21,700 format cell replaced the 18,650 in Model 3 production. Same NCA chemistry, larger cylinder, better energy to surface area ratio, fewer cells needed per pack.

[00:11:48]Panasonic later reported that the 21,700 achieved roughly 20% more energy per cell than the 18,650 it replaced.

[00:11:59]But NCA's energy density advantage comes with a risk profile that makes battery management engineers lose sleep.

[00:12:06]The high nickel content means the cathode is chemically reactive, especially when hot or overcharged.

[00:12:13]Thermal [snorts] runaway in NCA cells is more energetic and faster developing than in NMC and dramatically faster than in LFP.

[00:12:22]This is not a theoretical concern. It is the engineering constraint that shapes every decision in an NCA pack.

[00:12:30]Tesla's thermal management system in the Model S was not a simple cooling loop.

[00:12:34]It was an active liquid cooling system threaded between individual cell groups, maintaining pack temperature within a narrow operating window at all times.

[00:12:44]The battery management system monitors thousands of cells simultaneously, watching for voltage deviations that signal a weak cell before it becomes a dangerous one.

[00:12:54]The sophistication of that system is not a feature Tesla added for marketing reasons. It is the technical prerequisite for using NCA at automotive scale without catastrophic risk. Compare that directly against NMC. NMC at the 811 formulation pushes nickel high and faces similar stability questions. But NCA lives above 80% nickel content by design and always has. NMC 811 engineers spent years catching up to a risk profile NCA engineers had been managing since the early 2010s. NCA delivers more range per kilogram. It also demands more from the pack control systems around it.

[00:13:33]Costs more to manufacture and degrades faster under repeated deep cycles than a well-managed NMC pack. Real world NCA cycle life typically sits in the 500 to a,000 full cycle range to 80% capacity.

[00:13:48]that is shorter than NMC and considerably shorter than LFP.

[00:13:52]So the obvious question is why Tesla committed to the harder chemistry when safer options existed.

[00:13:59]The answer is that in 2012 nobody was buying range excuses.

[00:14:05]The early EV market was defined by anxiety and range was the primary argument against adoption.

[00:14:12]Tesla needed a number that ended the argument, not a number that was almost good enough. NCA delivered that number.

[00:14:19]The battery management complexity, the thermal system cost, the shorter cycle life, these were engineering problems Tesla judged it could solve, the range problem it could not afford to leave unsolved. That judgment built the company's early lead, and it established that pushing battery chemistry to its limit, then building the systems capable of surviving it, is a viable path to market.

[00:14:43]The question NCA leaves open is whether any chemistry with that risk profile has a long-term future once safer alternatives close the energy density gap. That gap is closing now.

[00:14:55]Number four, nickel metal hydride or NIMH. NCA pushed lithium ion chemistry to its chemical limit and built a company's early lead doing it. But before any lithium pack ever powered a production vehicle at scale, a different chemistry was already proving that electrified power trains could survive real roads, real weather, and real customers.

[00:15:18]That chemistry was NIMH, and it earned its credibility the hard way.

[00:15:24]The electrode structure is straightforward compared to what came before in this list.

[00:15:29]The positive electrode is nickel oxyhydroxide.

[00:15:33]The negative electrode is a metal hydide alloy, typically a rare earth compound in the lanthnum nickel family.

[00:15:41]During discharge, hydrogen ions transfer from the negative electrode to the positive one through a potassium hydroxide electrolyte.

[00:15:49]Charge the cell and the reaction reverses. No lithium, no cobalt, no exotic cathode oxide layers.

[00:15:57]The chemistry is simpler. The materials are more chemically stable and the cells tolerate abuse that would accelerate degradation in a lithium pack. The nominal cell voltage is around 1.2 volts. Lithium ion cells run at roughly 3.6 V per cell. That difference matters immediately at the system level. To reach the same pack voltage, NMH requires three times as many cells. More cells mean more mechanical connections, more monitoring points, and more opportunity for variation to accumulate across the pack.

[00:16:28]N IMH packs at the vehicle level are heavier and physically larger for the same energy content.

[00:16:35]Specific energy for NIMH sits roughly between 60 and 120 W hours per kg at the pack level. Compare that to NCA's 250 to 300 W hours per kilogram at the cell level. And the gap is not subtle. That gap is why NMH largely lost the battery electric race. But it did not lose the hybrid race. And that distinction matters enormously.

[00:16:59]The Toyota Prius is the anchor here.

[00:17:01]Toyota launched the first generation Prius in Japan in 1997.

[00:17:06]When it reached North American markets in 2000, it carried a NMH pack built in partnership with Panasonic EV Energy.

[00:17:13]That pack was not large by any modern standard. It stored roughly 1.3 kW hours of usable energy. The vehicle was not a battery electric car. It was a hybrid using combustion and electric drive together. And the NEMH pack's role was power buffering rather than primary range delivery.

[00:17:32]Capture energy during braking. Release it during acceleration. Keep the combustion engine operating near its efficiency peak.

[00:17:40]For that duty cycle, NIMH was close to ideal. The cells handled partial charge and discharge cycles extremely well.

[00:17:48]They accepted regenerative braking current at high rates without flinching.

[00:17:52]They tolerated temperature swings from desert heat to winter cold without the thermal management complexity that NCA demanded. The Toyota thermal management strategy on early Prius packs was air cooled. Cabin air, not liquid coolant.

[00:18:06]That simplicity was deliberate and it held up. Early Prius packs in taxi fleets accumulated hundreds of thousands of miles without pack replacement. That durability record changed the public conversation about EV battery longevity.

[00:18:20]The memory effect question comes up whenever NIMH is discussed and it needs a direct answer.

[00:18:27]Memory effect is real in older nickel cadmium cells. In N IMH the effect is present but significantly weaker and largely managed by modern battery management systems.

[00:18:38]Real world NMH packs in hybrid applications showed no meaningful capacity loss from partial cycling.

[00:18:44]Engineers later found that the primary aging mechanism in hybrid NEMH packs was calendar aging and high temperature storage, not memory effect.

[00:18:54]Toyota responded by keeping the pack state of charge window narrow, typically between 40 and 60% of rated capacity, avoiding both full charge and deep discharge in normal operation.

[00:19:06]That conservative window extended cycle life dramatically. Where NMH could not compete was in the battery electric segment.

[00:19:14]Driving 200 miles on NEMH chemistry requires a pack so heavy and so large that it consumes most of the vehicle's useful volume and payload capacity.

[00:19:24]GM's EV1 used NEMH in its second generation from 1999, achieving roughly 100 m of range from a pack weighing over 600 kg.

[00:19:35]The physics were not going to get dramatically better. The deeper problem was specific energy, and it pointed directly toward where the industry was heading.

[00:19:44]Every engineer looking at NIMH's ceiling and lithium ion's trajectory in the early 2000s could see the math resolving the same way.

[00:19:52]Lithium offered two to three times the specific energy with a chemistry that was still improving.

[00:19:58]NMH was mature. Its ceiling was visible and fixed. NMH built the bridge. It proved that battery packs could survive mass production, high mileage, and diverse climates without catastrophic failure.

[00:20:11]It gave the industry a decade of realworld data and public trust and then the chemistry that NMH made credible arrived and made it obsolete. That is not a defeat. That is what a successful proving ground looks like. NMH built the bridge and then stepped aside.

[00:20:28]But there is a chemistry older than the internal combustion engine, older than the telephone, older than the light bulb that never stepped aside at all. It is still inside the car you drive today.

[00:20:40]That fact deserves a real explanation.

[00:20:43]The chemistry was formalized in 1859 by French physicist Gaston Plante.

[00:20:49]The system is not elegant by modern standards. A lead dioxide positive plate, a sponge lead negative plate and concentrated sulfuric acid as the electrolyte. During discharge, both plates convert toward lead sulfate and the acid concentration drops. Charge it and the reaction reverses. The whole system is heavy, corrosive, and chemically inefficient.

[00:21:12]Specific energy sits between 30 and 50 W hours per kilogram at the pack level.

[00:21:17]NMC delivers 5 to six times that. The gap is not close, but the cost is almost nothing. Lead is abundant, globally distributed, and cheap. The manufacturing process has had 165 years of refinement. A lead acid cell produces approximately 2 volts per cell, the highest nominal voltage of any aquous battery chemistry. Six cells in series give you 12 VTs. That number will matter shortly. The early EV history here is genuine and it is largely forgotten.

[00:21:48]Electric vehicles using lead acid traction packs outsold gasoline vehicles in the United States around the turn of the 20th century.

[00:21:56]In 1900, roughly 28% of American automobiles were electric.

[00:22:02]The Colombia electric carriage, sold commercially from 1897, used a lead acid pack and achieved ranges of about 40 m per charge.

[00:22:11]Charles Janto's electric racing car set a land speed record of 39 mph in France in 1898, running on lead acid cells. The Baker Electric, popular through the early 1900s, was a legitimate urban transport vehicle. Quiet, reliable, and simpler to operate than handc cranked gasoline engines. The limitation that ended that era was specific energy. A gasoline engine stores roughly 12,000 W hours per kilogram of fuel. Lead acid stores 30 to 50. That ratio is not an engineering problem to be optimized. It is a chemistry ceiling. As road distances increased and infrastructure for gasoline expanded after 1910, lead acid could not keep up. Electric vehicles retreated to niche roles and stayed there for most of the 20th century. The cycle life compounds the problem. A well-managed lead acid pack delivers roughly 500 to 1,000 full charge cycles before capacity degrades significantly.

[00:23:11]NMC and LFP cells regularly achieve 1,00 to 3,000 cycles or more depending on chemistry and management.

[00:23:19]Lead acid sulfation, the irreversible hardening of lead sulfate crystals on the plates, accelerates when the battery sits at partial charge. Deep discharge is damaging. Fast charging is damaging.

[00:23:30]The chemistry punishes the same conditions that modern EV usage naturally produces. So why is lead acid inside a 2024 Tesla Model 3? Why is it inside a Rivian truck? Why does every lithium-powered EV on the road today carry a 12volt lead acid battery alongside its advanced traction pack?

[00:23:49]The answer is the auxiliary system.

[00:23:52]Every vehicle built in the last 60 years has standardized 12vt electrical architecture for lights, control modules, door locks, sensors, and low power accessories.

[00:24:02]That architecture was designed around lead acid. Replacing it with lithium for every vehicle subsystem would require redesigning decades of supplier ecosystems and safety certifications.

[00:24:14]Lead acid handles the 12volt bus cheaply and reliably. It accepts float charging without complex management. It tolerates long periods at full charge without damage which is exactly what a standby auxiliary system needs. The mass penalty is real but contained. A standard 12volt lead acid auxiliary battery weighs roughly 10 to 15 kg. In a vehicle with a 400 to 800 kg lithium traction pack, that weight is a rounding error. The safety trade-off is manageable because the battery is small and sits in a low energy role. The cost argument overwhelms every other consideration.

[00:24:51]Lead acid 12vt batteries cost between $80 and $150.

[00:24:55]equivalent lithium auxiliary batteries cost three to five times more at production volumes of hundreds of thousands of vehicles per year that Delta closes no business case. Some manufacturers are making the transition.

[00:25:08]BMW introduced a lithium ion auxiliary battery on select models. Certain Tesla configurations have moved in the same direction. The direction of travel is clear, but the transition is slow and economically driven, not technically urgent. A chemistry Gaston plante described in 1859 is surviving inside vehicles built in 2024, not because it is the best option. It survives because it is cheap enough, stable enough, and familiar enough to hold its specific role against every alternative that has tried to displace it. That is not nostalgia. That is engineering economics at work.

[00:25:45]The oldest battery chemistry in commercial use has outlasted every prediction of its obsolescence by simply refusing to become expensive.

[00:25:54]Lead acid survives by being cheap enough to ignore.

[00:25:58]The next two chemistries on this list survive by promising something entirely different. One of them is already in production vehicles. The other has been 2 years away from production for about 15 years running. Both deserve a clear look without the press release in the way.

[00:26:14]Sodium ion is the near-term story. The engineering logic is straightforward.

[00:26:18]Sodium sits directly below lithium on the periodic table. It behaves similarly in an electrochemical cell. You can build a sodium ion battery using manufacturing equipment designed for lithium ion, which means the capital investment is not starting from zero.

[00:26:33]KTL, the Chinese battery manufacturer that supplies roughly a third of the world's EV batteries, announced its first generation sodium ion cell in July 2021.

[00:26:43]Energy density was rated at 160 W hours per kilogram. That number matters. NMC cells in 2021 were hitting 250 to 300 W hours per kilogram. LFP was at 160 to 180. Sodium ion at its debut matched the bottom of the lithium pack. The material cost argument is where sodium wins.

[00:27:05]Lithium carbonate prices spiked above $80,000 per metric ton in late 2022 before crashing back. Sodium is effectively free by comparison. It is the sixth most abundant element in Earth's crust. Sodium ion cells also eliminate cobalt entirely and use very little or no lithium. For a manufacturer trying to insulate supply chains from price volatility, that is a real engineering advantage. The trade-off is density and cycle life. Sodium ions are larger than lithium ions. They require more space in the electrode structure.

[00:27:40]That limits how tightly you can pack energy.

[00:27:43]Cattle's second generation sodium ion cells announced in 2023 pushed toward 200 W hours per kilogram which closes the gap with LFP meaningfully.

[00:27:55]Sher's IICAR 3 launched in China in 2024 shipped with a sodium ion pack.

[00:28:02]That is not a concept. That is a production vehicle on public roads. The realistic application window for sodium ion is short-range urban EVs, two-wheelers, and budget city cars where total range matters less than cost per kilowatt hour.

[00:28:18]The chemistry is not chasing Tesla. It is chasing the $10,000 EV market in Southeast Asia and rural China, and it is winning there.

[00:28:28]Solid state is the long-term story, and the gap between the promise and the product is the most important thing to understand about it.

[00:28:36]A conventional lithium ion cell uses a liquid electrolyte to move ions between electrodes. That liquid is flammable. It degrades. It enables a failure mode called dendrite growth, where lithium metal forms needle-like structures during charging that can eventually punch through the separator and cause a short circuit. Thermal runaway follows.

[00:28:56]Every fire you have ever seen in EV news coverage traces back in some form to liquid electrolyte. Solid electrolytes eliminate the liquid entirely. Ceramic, polymer, or sulfidebased solid materials conduct ions while physically blocking dendrite propagation. A solid state cell can also use a lithium metal anode instead of graphite, which roughly doubles theoretical energy density.

[00:29:21]Toyota has been chasing this since at least 2010. QuantumCape, backed by Volkswagen, went public in 2020, claiming breakthrough solid state sales and a path to production by 2024 or 2025.

[00:29:34]Solid Power partnered with BMW and Ford set up a pilot line in Colorado in 2022 to produce cells for automotive testing.

[00:29:43]Here is what the dates actually show.

[00:29:46]QuantumCape demonstrated single layer pouch cells in 2020 under controlled lab conditions.

[00:29:53]Multi-layer cells required for real automotive capacity took years longer to validate.

[00:29:59]Interface resistance between the solid electrolyte and the electrode is the unresolved problem. Ions move through the solid, but the boundary where solid meets electrode creates resistance that grows with cycling. Manufacturing a solid electrolyte layer thin enough to be practical but uniform enough to be reliable at scale has not been solved at production volumes as of this writing.

[00:30:21]Toyota claimed in 2023 that it had solved key solid state manufacturing barriers and targeted 2027 to 2028 for limited production vehicles.

[00:30:32]That timeline may be real. It may slip.

[00:30:34]The honest answer is that no solidate EV battery has entered mass production at automotive scale.

[00:30:42]Pilot lines exist. Prototype data exists. The manufacturing barrier between a working prototype and 100,000 units per year is still the open loop.

[00:30:52]So, here is where the chemistry landscape lands. Sodium ion will likely power cheap short-range EVs in the late 2020s, especially in price sensitive Asian markets. LFP and NMC will dominate mainstream and longrange EVs through the 2020s and into the 2030s.

[00:31:10]Solid state, if the manufacturing barriers fall, will define the premium longrange platforms of the 2030s. If the barriers do not fall on schedule, the liquid electrolyte cell will hold its ground longer than anyone currently predicts.

[00:31:23]Every chemistry on this list was once called the future of energy storage.

[00:31:28]Most of them are still here. The battery that actually powers the next generation of transport will not be the one with the best press release. It will be the one that survives contact with a production