You might think of Samsung as a consumer electronics company but the tech maker is also well known as a components manufacturer. It’s particularly noted for its memory chips but there’s something new on the horizon — EV batteries.
Samsung has reportedly debuted its take on an electric vehicle battery at the SNE Battery Day 2024 Expo, an event so exclusive that Stuff wasn’t able to find an official website online. Perhaps it’s a Korean website or maybe Google really sucks now. It’s probably both.
Samsung does batteries better
Despite the lack of official communication — Samsung’s own website is also bare — several reports claim that the company’s new solid-state batteries turned up at the Seoul, South Korea event. While still in pre-production, various EV makers have had several months to play with them and the claimed results are startling.
The new EV batteries are more dense than traditional efforts, allowing for a higher weight-to-power ratio. They offer up to 500Wh per kilogram of battery, which could reduce the weight of the average EV by half without changing the possible range. Expected range from one of the company’s full-sized batteries is about 1,000km on a charge, but that’s not the really impressive bit.
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A projected lifespan for each battery of twenty years will raise your eyebrows but it’s the possible charge speed that’s really impressive. Samsung reportedly claims one of these batteries can be topped up in just nine minutes. Yikes. So what’s the catch?
There is one, of course. As with all new tech, these batteries are extremely expensive to make. Odds are that these batteries will, when they show up from 2027 onward, be reserved for the sort of vehicle that is sold to folks who don’t intend to drive them themselves. No, not delivery bikes. Chauffeur-driven BMWs, Mercs and other similarly premium-priced vehicles might offer these, with ongoing development possibly one day putting them within reach of the average driver. Possibly.