Solid-state battery technology has been merely discussed for many years as a candidate for electric vehicles. However, Mercedes-Benz is now going to deploy it in electric city buses, one of the industries which has been seeing electric vehicle adoption over the past decade.
Solid-state batteries have the potential to offer longer lifespans and higher capacity than conventional liquid-containing lithium-ion batteries. The fire risk of conventional li-ion batteries is another incentive to pursue solid-state alternatives. This risk arises from the highly reactive nature of lithium if exposed to the air.
Zac Palmer from Autoblog pointed out that the Mercedes solid-state technology (which is early to the solid-state EV battery game) is not offering the lofty performance that other companies are promised. That’s often the difference between what is theoretically possible with a new battery technology and what manufacturers are currently capable of achieving with said technology.
We’ve been through this with lithium-air and lithium sulfur batteries! Future iterations of the technology will likely offer better performance.
