Jun 28, 2018
Gregor is bullish on electric vehicles and especially nickel. While Lithium gets all the glory, nickel is extremely important. Here's what Gregor says about batteries.
Nickel manganese cobalt (NMC). Nickel provides the
performance, cobalt keeps the battery safe and manganese allows for
high current discharge without heating up excessively. The more
nickel is used, the more powerful and inexpensive the battery
becomes but it must be more carefully fine-tuned to maintain
safety. This chemistry has high energy density and a long life
span. There are three reference NMC generations: NMC111 containing
33% Nickel and 33% Cobalt is the simplest NMC622 contains 60%
Nickel and 20% Cobalt, greatly improving the power/cost ratio
NMC811 contains 80% Nickel and 10% Cobalt, the highest theoretical
performance vs. cost Lithium nickel cobalt aluminum (NCA).
A power/costs improvement over NMC 111 because it increased
the percentage of nickel while reducing expensive cobalt. Tesla
uses this extensively but will likely switch to the 3rd generation
NMC811 chemistry once mature. NCA has relatively lower energy
density but a long-life span. Lithium cobalt oxide (LCO). Used
extensively in the portable electronics industry, e.g. in iPhones,
this chemistry has good performance but, due to its very high
cobalt usage (around 55%), is expensive. LCO has a high energy
density but a short life span. Lithium iron phosphate (LFP).
Intrinsically safer than other chemistries but not nearly as
powerful as NMC811.
This was the early preferred choice in China, but the trend is
now to switch to NMC which meet the minimum energy density levels
required to qualify for Chinese government subsidies. Lithium
manganese oxide (LMO). It was used in early EVs, such as the Nissan
Leaf, because of its high reliability. LMO's downside is low cell
durability and mediocre power compared to competing
technologies.