Recent progress and challenges for manufacturing and operating solid-state batteries for electric vehicles

Solid-state batteries (SSBs) are expected to play an important role in vehicle electrification within the next decade. Recent advances in materials, interfacial design, and manufacturing have rapidly advanced SSB technologies toward commercialization. Many of these advances have been made possible in part by advanced characterization methods, which elucidated materials properties, interfacial behaviors, and degradation modes and their underlying causes. These insights have informed efforts to advance manufacturing and synthesis approaches and achieve improved performance. To reach widespread adoption, challenges associated with rate capability, reducing or eliminating the need for stack pressure, and high-throughput manufacturing must be addressed. This article summarizes recent progress, current understanding, ongoing challenges, and future needs to accelerate the development of next-generation, high-performance SSBs for electric vehicle applications. In doing so, the importance of scalable and sustainable processing of battery components is emphasized as critical to the maturation and commercial success of SSB technology.