On the afternoon of December 10th, Mee Park of Beijing Hengtong International Innovation Park, at the recording site of TED×Beijing, as the guest speaker of the finale, Hu Qichao took two batteries to the stage, one is the original battery of iPhone 6, the other one Although it has the same amount of power, it is only half the size of the iPhone 6.
What Hu Qichao wants to share with the audience is how he overcomes internal and external interference, and transforms the scientific theories in the thesis and the laboratory into scientific and technological achievements that can be practically applied. This is a new type of battery called Solid Energy. .
At the age of 11, Hu Qichao came to the United States with his family. After graduating from MIT, he turned the laboratory results into a startup project, founded Solid Energy, and replaced the original materials of lithium metal batteries with new electrolyte solutions to ensure safety. At the same time, the energy density of the battery is doubled to solve the pain point of short battery life. At present, Solid Energy is mainly used in high-altitude drones, and will be applied in the fields of mobile phones, wearable devices, and electric vehicles in the future.
In September 2013, Solid Energy received a total of 4.5 million US dollars of A-round investment from Xiangfeng Investment of Singapore's Temasek and Shanghai Dry Ocean, and a US$15 million B-round strategy from SAIC, GM and Applied Materials in July 2015. investment.
Smaller size and more energy
In 2007, Hu Qichao graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at MIT, but he began to shift his research direction from the hottest solar cells in the new energy field to lithium batteries , because in the view of Hu Qichao, lithium batteries are more used than solar cells. wide.
The earliest lithium metal batteries around 1980 were often a safety hazard. Sony introduced lithium-ion batteries around 1990 to solve the safety problem, but the energy density was reduced. On the other hand, the solid-state battery has high safety and high energy density potential. However, it cannot be used at room temperature. Therefore, lithium-ion batteries have become popular as soon as they are introduced.
In 2011, Hu Qichao’s research team made progress in the research of lithium batteries. Through the new electrolyte solution (a kind of lithium metal battery raw material), solid-state batteries can be used at room temperature, while solving safety problems, and lithium. Ion batteries have doubled their energy density.
At that time, after more than 30 years of development, the application of lithium metal batteries has already changed. Mobile phones and wearable devices have higher requirements for batteries (such as mobile phone screens are getting bigger and bigger, and batteries only increase density to improve endurance) . Hu Qichao saw that if the new findings can be applied in reality, the battery experience will be greatly improved.
In 2012, with his own research results, Hu Qichao, who had not graduated, participated in various business plan competitions. With the bonus of the competition, Hu Qichao founded Solid Energy and began to promote new lithium metal batteries.
That is, in December of that year, the same was founded in MIT, the same as the new energy battery direction of the American battery field star company A123 after eleven years of development and finally ended in a bankruptcy. In order to make battery samples using his advanced equipment and materials developed by himself, Hu Qichao directly moved the laboratory from the school to the A123 factory.
Specifically, the difference between Solid Energy and the old battery company A123 is that A123 mainly produces lithium iron phosphate battery , which has high safety and long cycle life, mainly used for buses and power tools, but has the disadvantage of low energy density for civilian vehicles. It is not the most cost-effective option.
What Solid Energy does is to change the energy density while doubling the energy density while maintaining the safety of the battery. At the same time, according to Hu Qichao, the overall cost of Solid Energy is 80% of the average battery.
In the process of financing, Hu Qichao was asked the most questions when facing investors: A123 has closed down for 11 years, and Solid Energy, which was just established, will only be able to take out only one BP in the sample. How big is the odds?
Helpless, Hu Qichao can only return to the laboratory and continue to produce batteries. During the half year, Hu Qichao constantly heard new discoveries and new achievements in the academic world. It seems that every discovery can subvert the industry.
"The battery is ultimately implemented in the physical, not just in the laboratory, it is still difficult to make a theoretical discovery into a real battery."
Six months later, Hu Qichao made Solid Energy's first battery sample, but the sluggish environment has allowed more US investment institutions to take a wait-and-see attitude. After seeing more than one hundred, Hu Qichao decided to fly back to China to find opportunities.
In September 2013, Hu Qichao received a total of 4.5 million US dollars of A-round investment from Xiangfeng Investment of Singapore's Temasek and Shanghai Dry Ocean, and Solid Energy also moved from “single-armed combat†to the formation of its regular army. The team expanded to seven.
In the next year and a half, Hu Qichao team began to produce more battery samples in A123's factory. They were sent to GM, SAIC, Apple, Samsung, Google and other companies to receive the power density test and get the enterprise's Recognition.
Battery production and corporate recognition have also accelerated a new round of financing, and everything seems to be smooth.
However, entrepreneurship also allowed Hu Qichao's work and life to be spent almost in the calculation of time difference. In the morning, he woke up to contact with European partners, and in the morning, he partnered with the partners on the east coast of the United States. In the afternoon, he would contact the partners in the West Bank after working in the company in the afternoon. Late night time is handed over to partners in China and South Korea.
In July 2015, Solid Energy completed a $15 million round of strategic financing from SAIC, General Motors and Applied Materials, Inc., which will help Solid Energy to industrialize production in the production chain.
Cut into high altitude drone
For Solid Energy, a four-year startup company, A123 is more like its own "senior brother." The problem that Hu Qichao had to face was: the battery samples were created. How can I avoid the mistakes of A123 if I want to carry out mass production in large scale?
Now, looking back at the development track of A123, we can see that it has a rapid decline from the peak: A123 after financing has chosen to expand rapidly, from raw materials to assembly itself, and finally it is difficult to defeat giants such as LG and Samsung.
So at the beginning, Hu Qichao chose to produce only the core materials of the new batteries and provide them to the battery manufacturers for assembly, turning A123's previous competitors into partners. Before that, you need to produce battery samples in small batches as a stepping stone to take investment institutions and partners.
In August of this year, Hu Qichao wrote in a circle of friends: "The new home in the next five years can hold a pair of Boeing 747 wings." The picture is located at MIT's nearby Solid Energy more than two thousand flats. New factory. Here, after the battery raw materials are produced, they will be supplied to the battery manufacturers in Korea and China for the next assembly process, and at the same time, the production of 5,000 batteries per month can be realized, and the batteries are mainly used for high-altitude drones. This means that Solid Energy can finally get out of the lab and be tested in practical applications.
Solid Energy's factory
Hu Qichao has his own considerations because he chose high-altitude drones to avoid the hot electric cars , mobile phones and wearable devices.
“A lot of battery companies started out in the automotive field from the beginning. In the end, because of the three to five years of testing time, a large number of startups were dragged down. The battery market for cars and mobile phones is large, but the demand for high energy density batteries is Not urgent, and high-altitude drones can't fly to the required height if they don't have the right batteries."
At present, in the imagination of companies such as Facebook and Google, high-altitude drones that rely on batteries and solar energy fly to between 20,000 and 30,000 meters. They can establish contact with lasers and satellites to provide WiFi to the ground, and because there is no lighter and thinner. For batteries with higher energy density, no high-altitude drone has ever flown to the required height.
This year, Solid Energy began working with two civilian and military high-altitude drone companies to test batteries. Compared to ordinary batteries of 200 watt-hours/kg, Solid Energy's energy density has reached 450 watt-hours/kg, cycle life. More than 300 times. According to Hu Qichao, it is expected that by July next year, there will be a real high-altitude drone that uses Solid Eergy's battery to fly above 20,000 meters above sea level for nearly nine months of continuous operation. Solid Energy's current production capacity can meet the needs of 5-10 high-altitude drones.
In Hu Qichao's vision, by 2018, SolidEnergy will be applied to mobile phones and wearable devices, and will enter the automotive field after 2019.
However, despite the higher energy density, the problem with Solid Energy is that fast charging is not possible, and it usually takes eight hours to fully charge a single charge.
In general
Battery technology has been slow to develop over the past few decades, and although there are many academic voices, it is commendable to be able to turn theory into a real battery. Whether it's for Solid Energy or other new energy startups, the most important thing is security. For Solid Energy, which doubles the energy density, when it comes to large-scale commercialization, you need to carefully consider the cost. And accept the verification of time.
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