Samsung Promises 800 km EVs on a 10-Minute Charge

“Nine-minute pit stop, twenty-year warranty, range anxiety just got fired.”

Samsung SDI’s oxide solid-state battery prototype, first teased at SNE Battery Day, has cleared independent safety testing and now clocks an eye-watering 500 Wh/kg energy density—almost double today’s best lithium-ion packs. In road-load simulations, a midsize EV fitted with the pouch cell cruised 800 km per charge and hit 80 % refill in nine minutes on a 600 kW pump, thanks to a silver-carbon anode that ditches dendrite-prone lithium metal and a sulfide-free electrolyte that shrugs off moisture.

Engineers say the big magic is an anode-free “self-forming” silver-lithium alloy that swells just 1.2 %, keeping internal pressure tame enough for conventional casings. Thermal runaway doesn’t begin until 240 °C, so automakers can scrap heavy fire shields and trim roughly 150 kg of ballast. Samsung’s abuse tests—including nail penetration, over-charge and 200-g crush shocks—logged zero venting or thermal flare, addressing regulators’ last-mile safety fears.

Scale is next. A 20 MWh Suwon pilot line comes online in July, stamping a cell every 40 seconds; volume packs for Hyundai’s Ioniq 9 and BMW’s Neue Klasse are pencilled for late 2027. Samsung projects cycle life above 1,000 deep cycles (roughly 20 years of normal driving) with 88 % capacity retention, numbers that could let manufacturers downsize battery warranties and still outlast chassis corrosion. If yields hold, analysts estimate cost parity with nickel-rich lithium-ion by 2028, then a rapid slide as Samsung licenses the oxide electrolyte to tier-one suppliers.

Knock-on effects reach far beyond cars. Samsung is already pressure-forming 50 Wh/kg flex cells for phones that sprint from 0-100 % in five minutes, while grid-storage arms are modelling 100 MWh “micro-peaker” banks that recharge between solar peaks. Rival chemistries from CATL and Toyota still rely on fragile sulfide layers, so a successful oxide route could reset the EV arms race and make six-hundred-mile commutes—and five-minute coffee-stop re-fuels—an everyday reality.