Li-Ion Batteries : a Key Component for Electric Vehicles and Renewable Energies

Developed and marketed by Sony in the early 1990s to meet the needs of the rapidly expanding consumer electronics market (portable music players, camcorders, cell phones, etc.), "lithium-ion" batteries revolutionized electrochemical battery technology. Despite their high initial cost – linked both to the choice of the first materials used and to their development cost –, their high energy density (which determines the autonomy of the powered device) enabled them, during the first phase of their development, to rapidly outperform the technologies used until then (nickel-cadmium, Ni-MH...). Continuous improvements in terms of technological maturity, performance and production volumes, combined with developments in electrode materials and increased competition in this sector, have, since 2010, opened up a second phase in their development, broadening their range of applications. Markets previously considered inaccessible have been addressed, such as electric mobility. Lithium batteries are now proving to be the tool of a veritable societal upheaval: the transition from fossil-fuel-powered internal combustion vehicles to all-electric or electrified vehicles (simple hybrids, rechargeable hybrids) with low emissions – when the electricity used to recharge them is itself decarbonized – greenhouse gases. In the near future, these developments will probably extend to public transport and heavy goods vehicles, and perhaps also to a share of sea freight, further multiplying manufacturing volumes and helping to further reduce the greenhouse gas emissions responsible for climate change.

In a market already partly locked in by mostly Asian manufacturers, who have been patiently preparing for this revolution for the past fifteen years, mastering most of the value chain – from the extraction of electrode materials to the end-of-life recycling – of the Li-ion battery is a formidable but essential challenge: it involves reducing the risk of dependence on a key on-board component, which accounts for a very significant share of the vehicle's final cost (around 40% by 2024). This requirement, which ties in with the need to regain a national industrial sovereignty that has been neglected for too long in Europe, is similarly driving the search for ever more efficient "post-Li-ion" systems.