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First, "What is an LTO battery?"
The chemistry is Lithium Titanate Oxide:
* Extremely fast charging (5 minutes),
* 20,000+ cycle life,
* Excellent safety,
* Wide temperature tolerance,
* Lower energy density (30-60wh/kg),
* Low voltage (2.4v+ nominal),
* Obscenely expensive.
Despite the premium expense, sales for LTO are expected to reach as much as $12.5 billion by 2030 from producers such as:
* Toshiba, taken private for $14 billion USD in late 2023,
* Gree Altairnano, \~$600 mil USD,
* Microvast, $1 billion USD (MVST)
* CATL, $230 billion USD
What is the proposition from GMG.v?
Graphene-Aluminum hybrid supercapacitors:
* 100wh/kg energy density,
* Fast charging (5-6 minutes),
* 20,000+ cycle life,
* Excellent safety,
* Wide temperature tolerance (100° & -30°)
* Reasonable voltage (3.4v+ nominal)
* Affordable.
Companies like CATL, constantly make acquisitions for battery innovations and suppliers, and will likely have to work with GMG unless they want to lose their LTO market advantage over time.
**Affordability analysis**, the battery is composed of only a few things:
1. Aluminum ($3/kg),
2. Separator (2-3% of a battery)
3. Proprietary electrolyte ($/kg? major unknown pricing)
4. Graphene ($24/kg),
Normally, Graphene is far more expensive/KG than anything that would be considered in an LTO battery, but in the last few years, several methods for producing graphene cheaply, reliably, and effectively have come forward (see: Hydrograph, Torqouise group, Rice University, GMG).
The inputs that GMG and Hydrograph use are Methane and Acetylene respectively. Bringing up Hydrograph in this form will probably trigger some HG investors to respond, but its important for discussion.
Methane is a very cheap and a readily available input material. Methane is 3× to 20× cheaper per kg of carbon than acetylene. Methane is generally available already in most relevant commercial/industrial zoning.
math bullshit:
>!Methane (CH4) Molecular mass: !<
>!C = 12.01, !<
>!H4 = 4.032 !<
>!Carbon mass fractions = 12.01 / 16.04 ≈0.749% !<
>!1 Mcf ≈ 1,000 ft³ !<
>!1,000 ft³ = 28.3168 m³!<
>!Methane density at STP ≈0.716 kg/m³ !<
>!1 Mcf ≈ 20.3 kg methane,!<
≈$4.37/1000 Cubic feet current prices according to EIA
You might see GMG having input costs of \~$.21-$.40/kg for methane derived Graphene.
Manufacturing costs might be higher, given that the upcoming 10-tonne graphene unit seemed to have an investment cost of $2.3mil, for 10 tonnes of graphene per year - over a 10 year run time, comes out to a $23/kg ceiling in manufacturing costs.
These production unit costs may come down in time as its the first of its kind, which would drastically affect the baseline costs thereafter..
In battery analyses, you can view a normalization curve as Lithium chemistries became more optimized over time. You can imagine something similar for this nascent Aluminum chemistry, since they will use the same manufacturing plants.
https://preview.redd.it/yhk1ryspzkeg1.png?width=1380&format=png&auto=webp&s=24a2be6bf7c5924dd78544e89a93dfa39d9038e4
Really, they will use the same equipment, but less of it, to produce these batteries in an acquired Lithium battery plant. And as we see in the following graphic, outside of an Unknown electrolyte, their material costs without optimization are already very similar to that of Lithium..
https://preview.redd.it/1o96nobqzkeg1.png?width=1416&format=png&auto=webp&s=1661e1b6efad99e09b7525cc36dcbea560b2fe35
And yet they have similar performance to existing LTO!
https://preview.redd.it/l1wywfiszkeg1.png?width=1429&format=png&auto=webp&s=0563de871af2628daa0ab5a638d8a5dfab74a0eb
One of the major cost advantages in manufacturing is a "few hours wakeup time" compared to the weeks of aging that Lithium batteries need. So any production facility, instead of needing a dedicated area for 300-500 hours for aging a battery, they need a comparatively minimal footprint and process for batteries that wake up in a few hours:
https://preview.redd.it/1apnayjtzkeg1.png?width=1424&format=png&auto=webp&s=c9a3fab3a9522c0f650d7586dfa5f85aaa4f9556
Aging and Formation attribute to 41% of the manufacturing costs. Given how quick aging and Charging the battery is.. Formation processes are knocked down significantly.
So.. if we are looking at a Modern manufacturing line, that is down to \~$30/kg from cheaper materials, and simplified manufacturing lines. All while maintaining high performance that competes with LTO.
https://preview.redd.it/qqlkt9cuzkeg1.png?width=1277&format=png&auto=webp&s=91430c673ec60778b27e0f946b1a883398e75b34
Within 2026 they are moving up to BTRL level 5-6, which means chemistry finalization and large pack design prototypes. They communicated the goal is to reach 75wh/kg at 5 min charging.
The long-term biggest optimizations will be in Graphene unit production costs, and energy density increases at the cell level. A fully optimized battery would be competitive to lithium with all considerations.
At the end of the day, there is theoretically 3x more energy density if they use all 3 Aluminum ions, where Lithium only has one. But that's purely speculation for a distant future.
TLDR;
GMG's Graphene Aluminum chemistry runs \~$275/kwh USD with the numbers all-in.
Not yet price competitive to Lithium at $115/kwh USD.
But... VERY competitive to LTO pricings, ranging from $800-1500/kwh USD
Despite those insane kwh costs the market size is $5 billion USD in sales.
With all that considered.. there's 3 other graphene products to discuss within GMG