The title is misleading.
“Throughout this period, the system remained free of harmful by-products or sediment while achieving a 99.4 percent leak-proof efficiency. Even at high power outputs, it retained 78.5 percent of its energy efficiency, proving that the design is both reliable and durable.”
99.4% leak proof against material transitioning within the membranes.
78.5% energy output efficiency.
And as others have said no useful metrics tbh.
The battery prototype demonstrated endurance, maintaining a stable structure and perfect reversibility over 6,000 cycles — equivalent to more than 16 years of daily operation — with zero loss in storage capacity.
WTF!? If this battery is just half as good as they claim, it could be a game changer for storing power for solar and wind!
The problem is that 6000 cycles in laboratory are not the same than 6000 cycles in real life scenarios.
It would be interesting to put that battery out in the field and to see how it perform in real life conditions (assuming that they are cheap enough to be produced in large volumes)
If they are really that good you are right, but there are always a lot of revolutionary advance in lab that never leave it.
Indeed: electric vehicle batteries are lasting even longer than estimated. All the constant breaks from use that the batteries get has been interestingly improving their durability (which makes me think that shutting off our phones for 1 whole day per week or even month could improve their lifespan, even for the 40-80% lithium-ion boundary keepers).
Just make hot swapping batteries normal again like it used to be.
There actually was a Chinese EV startup that had battery swap stations: drive up onto the system, and the battery is directly under your car; the swap takes <1 minute. I don’t remember what it was called, though, nor if it ever made it.
Update: it’s Nio.
Tom Scott did a video on it. In all honesty, there are a number of things about this system that I just don’t see working well in the long term, but it’s an interesting prototype nonetheless.
That’s it: Nio! Yeah, I dislike the reliability on the company, too.
Tesla did that as well about 10 years ago. They opted to not do it anymore if I recall correctly because they couldn’t control how the batteries were being maintained or what age of battery you would get.
Isn’t that Nio?
Edit: didn’t see it had been answered already
Gogoro a moped/scooter company in Taiwan has these. Little stations all over the country where you can swap your battery out, it was pretty amazing.
There was one like that in Taiwan for scooters.
When was hot-swapping batteries normal? What was the backup power source? I’d only ever seen normally swappable batteries where the phone would need to power off and back on.
I’ve never owned a flip phone that I couldn’t plug in and swap the battery with a new one without it turning off. If that wasn’t normal with your phones I’m not sure why, maybe different circuitry?
Regardless making devices easy to repair, and thus open and maintainable was what I was getting at.
Somehow, I forgot about charging cables.
Somehow, charging cables returned
Breaks from use makes perfect sense though, it allows the electrolyte to diffuse evenly. During charge /discharge cycles there’s always more or less active electrolyte being consumed/produced at the anodes and cathodes, resting means it can equalize.
Fascinating, I didn’t know that that’s the reason… Would you happen to have any data on how long this diffusion process takes?
I’ve seen some incredible innovations in batteries performing really well in cold temperatures. So the idea of these becoming battle tested seems more feasible today than it did even a couple years ago.
It really depends on the charge/discharge conditions that the particular test is using. You can do testing in the lab that is way harsher than typical usage or you can make it easier. In terms of this cycle testing for Li-ion I would say that typically the lab testing would be harsher than real world primarily because lab testing is done between 0% and 100% depth of discharge constantly where most people are charging their batteries much before then and only cycling them at high rates periodically.
It really depends on the charge/discharge conditions that the particular test is using.
True.
You can do testing in the lab that is way harsher than typical usage or you can make it easier. In terms of this cycle testing for Li-ion I would say that typically the lab testing would be harsher than real world primarily because lab testing is done between 0% and 100% depth of discharge constantly where most people are charging their batteries much before then and only cycling them at high rates periodically.
You are right, but we should see what they want to demostrate in the lab test: that the tech works or to have a way to make a sensational announcement based on some data ?
If you put that battery on the market, the 6000 cycles still stand or they are only a lab result ?
Aside the harsh or easy charge/discharge cycles, what other condition they tested ? A battery on a bench has different problems than a battery on a car on the road.That said, if the tech works really has announced, it would be great.
For a press release bragging about a new advancement especially for a product that doesn’t even exist yet, I would guarantee they’re using the ‘easier’ test.
Those are not the metrics that are important for storing wind and solar. Cost per MWh is the important one.
It is great to see, and isn’t an unreasonable jump from lifepo4. They already do 4-6k charge cycles with something like 20% degradation. This is a bigger deal for electronics and vehicles as it would make battery replacements unnecessary.
But cycle life is a central parameter for the cost of a battery, the longer it lasts the more rarely you have to replace it. In the longer term, a battery that lasts twice as long can be practically half as expensive.
Assuming the manufacturing costs (materials + utilities + other fees + labor + profit extraction) for the two types of batteries are equal, yes.
No? Even if the new battery is 3x more expensive to build, and has 50 % of the capacity of a Li-ion battery, it can still have an advantage in large scale storage if it lasts for 10x as many cycles without degrading. At the end of the day, it’s a combination of parameters that determine which is the best for a given application, and high resistance to degradation can outweigh other parameters in many scenarios.
There’s always a catch, details matter.
Some chemistries can only work if heated up to a certain temperature.
Some cannot supply high currents. Some perform badly at lower temperatures. Some are expensive to produce. Some have a very low energy density per weight or volume. Some are hard to create consistently and require a lot of balancing. Some cannot be scaled up easily. Some are prone to aging regardless of cycles. Some even require manual maintenance.It’s hard to make a cell that does everything right. Cycle life is only one out of a huge list of parameters.
If all of the claims from Chinese tech companies and research was half as good as they claim we would all learn Mandarin by now.
That is exactly right, and simplified Chinese is actually extremely popular to learn here now. (Denmark)
And no wonder, they have become leaders of several key (future) technologies.Counter point: I know exactly one person who learned Mandarin and several dozen who don‘t. Pretty much everyone learned english and (to a lesser degree) a third language that isn‘t Mandarin either. French, Spanish and Japanese are popular, though.
They teach Mandarin in more US high schools every year
Have you heard of a man named Elon Musk? He’s the king of over promising. US company’s put out just as much garbage “look we solved X” as China dude.
Classic Fediverse. Can‘t have China critique without the token whataboutism response.
IF is doing quite a bit of heavy lifting there.
And yes IF it is as you said HALF that good, in either direction— the article mentioned ~80% under heavy loads. And that alone would be a game changer.
Energy storage is the “oil” of the future.
IF — we shall see. But I’m hopeful
Less talking about miracle batteries, more making miracle batteries 😡
They are being made, CATL is already making solid state batteries that break with traditional Lithium batteries on both price and safety. Mass production is expected by 2027.
Your comment is both ignorant and misleading.Your comment is both ignorant and misleading.
“Less talking. More X,” is a cliche that doesn’t imply that there is zero “X.”
I think you’re fundamentally misunderstanding their comment and then attributing your mistake to them as if it’s their mistake.
Batteries is probably one of thew most researched technologies ATM. So asking for more research and less talking when the progress of actual research is publicized is just moronic idiotic, and everything else describing ignorance.
The comment is satire. You get reports about amazing batteries about every month, yet
mostpretty much all of them never went into production. It has been like that for years, since I was a teenager at the very least. And what has happened since then was pretty much refinements to Li-Ion and the commercialization LiFePO.It has been like that since Volta started making stacks of different metal plates and making dead frogs dance. It might surprise you to learn that making subatomic particles dance to our whim at a pace we determine isn’t very easy. We try all kinds of neat ideas to make them do this, and some of them even work. The fact that people like you see all the times we try and it doesn’t work as an indicator that we aren’t trying very hard rather than researchers trying very hard and not always being as successful as we’d like is more an indictment of you than it is of them.
Also, unlike when I started watching advances in batteries, you can find the history of rechargeable batteries with just a few minutes of web searching. If you had put in even that little bit of effort, you would know that advances in rechargeable batteries neither started nor ended with lithium.
The timeline from research to “in my products” feels like a decade.
It usually is at least a decade. New modern technology and manufacturing processes take years to decades to get up to speed because of all the hiccups and surprises they find along the way.
You called their comment “ignorant and misleading.” Do you actually stand behind those words?
So asking for more research and less talking when the progress of actual research is publicized is just moronic idiotic, and everything else describing ignorance.
They didn’t ask for “more research.” They were asking for more of these cheap and effective batteries to be available for them to purchase.
Less talk and more delivery is the same as increasing investments in research and production even more than they already are. To deliver even better batteries even faster requires more research. I was using the logical conclusion of what was said.
So yes I absolutely 100% stand by my original comment, because there is absolutely a lot more than talking, when it’s the area that is probably seeing some of the heaviest research for more than 2 decades now. And there absolutely is delivering too.Of course we all want even better and cheaper batteries, it’s a braindead comment to make. I also wish there were more pink unicorns.
I absolutely 100% stand by my original comment
Great, so I guess you’ll talk specifically about why it was both “ignorant” and “misleading”.
Of course we all want even better and cheaper batteries, it’s a braindead comment to make.
Whoops. It seems you failed to say anything about why the comment was “ignorant” or “misleading”. Even if you accept it’s “braindead”, and I don’t, that only means it’s not using brain power, like the author is just on autopilot, and doesn’t mean “ignorant.”
Of course, it would have been an impossible endeavor to prove your point, because their comment was neither ignorant nor misleading.
Anyways, I’m done here. I’ll be reporting you for violating Rule 3 and blocking you.
My unicorn is invisible and pink.
That’s the best kind.
Solid state too? I know they started mass producing sodium-ion which is a huge deal but hadn’t heard abt solid state lithium.
Well maybe only semi, but real solid state is in preparation to be mass produced already 2027.
To be clear, I have a fair bit of confidence in CATL’s roadmap as they have delivered steadily over the years.
LESS TALKING MORE MAKING
Why is there never a single relevant metric mentioned? Here its only cycles and efficiency (which I assume is capacity).
This article is just blogspam reporting of an SCMP article, which also doesn’t link to the paper, which is here: https://advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aenm.202506734
But the full text is not available there. You might be able to find it elsewhere.
First published: 01 April 2026
Now, is that cause for worry or am I silly?
I don’t think China does April Fools’ Day.
Scientists generally don’t do it.
Now, Feynman day (11 May) on the other hand…
The publication date would be decided by Wiley.
