From Lead to Solid State: A Hundred Years of the Battery

In 1859, the French physicist Gaston Planté dipped two lead plates into sulphuric acid and invented the first rechargeable battery. Its energy density was 30 watt-hours per kilogram; the lithium-ion cell in a modern mobile phone manages five to seven times that. The technology has improved steadily ever since, but the real take-off has come only in the past decade and a half. Between 2010 and 2025, the price of lithium-ion batteries fell by more than 90%, which is what allowed electric cars to be something other than toys for the rich. In 2024, more than 17 million electric cars were sold worldwide, roughly 20% of the entire new-car market. In 2023, the figure was just 14 million — the pace of growth is astonishing.

The question is no longer whether electric cars will take over. That has been settled. The question is what batteries will go into them, at what price, and who will build them. As the technology shifts, so does the economic balance of power. And Hungary is staking its future on a single bet: trillions of Hungarian forints (HUF) are going into plants across the country to make it Europe's battery-manufacturing hub. But will the factories now under construction be producing the technology of the future — or will they be obsolete by the time they are finished?

Why does the price of the battery matter so much? Because the pack still accounts for 30–40% of the price of an electric car. In 2010, when a kilowatt-hour of capacity cost $1,100, the 60 kWh pack in an average family car came to $66,000 on its own — more than the full price of a compact petrol car. Today, the same pack costs $6,500. It was this dramatic fall in price that made mass production economic. According to BloombergNEF, the global average price in 2025 was $108/kWh (a weighted average covering both NMC and LFP cells; NMC chemistry on its own hovered around $128/kWh), and in China just $84. The price of lithium iron phosphate (LFP) packs has dropped to $81/kWh, closing in on price parity with internal-combustion cars.

But the fall in price is not, on its own, enough to explain what is coming. The range of technologies on offer is more varied than it has ever been. Conventional lithium-ion (NMC) cells, which use nickel, manganese and cobalt, still deliver the longest range, but they are expensive and a fire risk. Lithium iron phosphate (LFP) is cheaper and safer, but heavier, and it performs poorly in the cold. Chinese manufacturers — BYD and CATL above all — are now betting heavily on LFP, because it is cheap and good enough for public transport and city cars.

The real excitement, though, is around sodium-ion. CATL unveiled its first generation in 2021 and announced an improved version in 2023, which went into mass production in 2025 at an energy density of 175 Wh/kg (Naxtra). From the end of 2026, it will go into passenger cars as well. Sodium-ion contains no lithium, no cobalt and no nickel — sodium is available in limitless quantities from seawater and rock salt. Its energy density of 175 Wh/kg is already enough for an average family car. If its price really does come in significantly below that of lithium-ion, it could reshape the entire market. That is of particular interest to countries with no lithium deposits of their own — Hungary among them.

The solid-state battery is the holy grail. In a solid-state cell, a solid material conducts the current in place of a liquid electrolyte, which means it does not catch fire, does not freeze, and survives ten times as many charge cycles. Its energy density could reach 500–1,000 Wh/kg, which would mean twice the range of a current Tesla Model 3 from a battery of the same size. The problem: mass production has not been cracked. Toyota and Samsung SDI both promise first deliveries by 2027, CATL by 2026–2027, but experts expect genuine mass production between 2028 and 2030. If that happens, the technology in the lithium-ion plants going up today could be obsolete by the end of the decade.

More than 55% of the world's battery production is in the hands of two Chinese companies, CATL and BYD. Europe has only a handful of major plants in operation: LG Energy in Poland, and Samsung SDI and SK On in Hungary, with sites at Komárom in the north-west and Iváncsa in the centre of the country — the Iváncsa plant is one of the largest in Europe — while CATL's is now going up in Debrecen, Hungary's second city. The geopolitical stakes are enormous: if Europe cannot build a battery-manufacturing base of its own, the whole continent's car industry will be left dependent on Chinese supply chains. That is precisely why Hungary has taken on an enormous risk: it is trying to secure that position with trillions of forints in state subsidies, with infrastructure programmes, and with environmental sacrifices. But is it worth it? And if so, for whom?

Technological progress is not linear. In 2010, we were told that by 2020 everyone would be driving an electric car. It did not turn out that way. Now we are told that the solid-state revolution will arrive by 2030. Perhaps. What is certain is this: whoever builds on lithium today will build on sodium tomorrow, and on something else the day after. The question is whether Hungary ends up as a manufacturing hub in that chain, or merely as a low-value-added contract assembler.

— The Danube Lens