Bottom-up cost modeling of lithium-ion battery cells for electric vehicle applications

Abstract

Lithium-ion Batteries (LIBs) have come a long way with various improvements to make them more efficient, compact, and safe while simultaneously enhancing the energy density and cycle life. If it is possible to improve the technicalities to lower the cell cost by indicating some potential solutions, the economic issues in LIBs automotive applications can be addressed. This study intends to approach a bottleneck solution for pure Electric Vehicle (EV) cost reduction. The BatPaC 5.0 modeling tool is used to examine different cell chemistries (NMC811-Graphite(Gr), NCA-Gr, LFP-Gr, LMO-Gr, and 50%/50%NMC532/LMO-Gr) and determine the accuracy of the hypothesis made on the effect of positive electrode coating thickness of LIBs, on the cell cost, gravimetric energy density and volumetric energy density in high volume production. Using the above assumption, it is obtained that doubling the coating thickness of the positive electrode from 60 to 120 μm, reduces the cost in all cell types. But the highest by ~20% in LFP-Gr. And it emerges that increasing the positive electrode coating thickness of LIBs, lowers the cell cost whilst improving the gravimetric energy density and volumetric energy density. Therefore, the positive electrode coating thickness can be considered a crucial parameter in cell cost reduction.