LG Energy Solution and Seoul National University researchers have found a way to improve the durability of lithium manganese-rich (LMR) batteries, a lower-cost chemistry that could help reduce EV battery costs by using more manganese and less expensive materials.
The breakthrough tackles one of the biggest obstacles to putting the technology into larger EV battery cells: gas build-up and degradation during repeated charging.
By adjusting how the cells are charged, discharged and initially conditioned at the factory, the researchers sharply reduced those problems.
In testing, the large-format cells retained 92.2% of their original energy after 883 charge-discharge cycles.
LMR batteries are not ready for mass production yet, but the results address one of the problems holding them back.
