I never thought much about this, but after reading the article it looks interesting. I could see hundreds off these things cranking out battery cells in a battery factory, depends on what the equipment and the materials cost, it's gotta work and be profitable. It does appear to offer some outstanding cell performance though and a lot of design possibilities.
Sakuu’s Kavian 3D-printing joins metals, polymers, and binders for cheaper, lighter, more sustainable and power-dense solid-state batteries for future EVs.
www.motortrend.com
Can 3D Printing Finally Make Solid-State EV Batteries Practical?
Sakuu’s Kavian 3D-printing process deposits metals, polymers, binders enabling cheaper, lighter, more sustainable and power-dense solid-state batteries.
Simpler, Smaller. Cheaper Manufacturing
With the Sakuu Kavian process, raw materials enter the machine and functioning batteries come out, passing through vastly less equipment. Relative to today's roll-to-roll battery manufacturing process, for a given output, Sakuu believes this approach can reduce factory footprint by 44 percent, lower capital expenditure by 23 percent, slash the number of operations by 69 percent, resulting in a total reduction in manufacturing cost of 33 percent. A single 30-foot-long machine like the one pictured above is expected to be able to produce 40 mWh/yr worth of batteries (about 500 individual EV's worth), incorporating all deposition and inspection steps to turn raw materials into working batteries.
What About The Batteries Themselves?
Sakuu's stated goal is to deliver double the energy density at 30 percent less weight than prevailing lithium-ion chemistries. And while the company claims its Kavian 3D printing process can be applied to other battery chemistries, inherently improving energy density on the order of 10-15 percent (by eliminating wasted space in the battery), the lithium-metal design in discussion here is currently building out at 800 watt-hours per liter. The company sees a pathway to 1,200 Wh/l but notes that cycle-life can decrease at higher densities, so if longer life is the goal, a more modest energy density may make more sense. The lithium-ion batteries powering today's EVs typically average around 350-500 Wh/l by comparison.
An as yet unexplored opportunity is the freedom of form-factor proposed by 3D printed batteries. Last year we explored the
possibility of incorporating battery materials into a vehicle's body structure. Sakuu's Kavian process for producing Swift Print batteries certainly seems like another potential enabler of this concept, and when the battery's mass is serving a dual purpose that would otherwise be performed by another material, it's no longer a burden to the propulsion system.