Tech
The EV Battery Tech That’s Worth the Hype, According to Experts
You’ve seen the headlines: This battery breakthrough is going to change the electric vehicle forever. And then … silence. You head to the local showroom, and the cars all kind of look and feel the same.
WIRED got annoyed about this phenomenon. So we talked to battery technology experts about what’s really going on in electric vehicle batteries. Which technologies are here? Which will be, probably, but aren’t yet, so don’t hold your breath? What’s probably not coming anytime soon?
“It’s easy to get excited about these things, because batteries are so complex,” says Pranav Jaswani, a technology analyst at IDTechEx, a market intelligence firm. “Many little things are going to have such a big effect.” That’s why so many companies, including automakers, their suppliers, and battery-makers, are experimenting with so many bit parts of the battery. Swap one electrical conductor material for another, and an electric vehicle battery’s range might increase by 50 miles. Rejigger how battery packs are put together, and an automaker might bring down manufacturing costs enough to give consumers a break on the sales lot.
Still, experts say, it can take a long time to get even small tweaks into production cars—sometimes 10 years or more. “Obviously, we want to make sure that whatever we put in an EV works well and it passes safety standards,” says Evelina Stoikou, who leads the battery technology and supply chain team at BloombergNEF, a research firm. Ensuring that means scientists coming up with new ideas, and suppliers figuring out how to execute them; the automakers, in turn, rigorously test each iteration. All the while, everyone’s asking the most important question: Does this improvement make financial sense?
So it’s only logical that not every breakthrough in the lab makes it to the road. Here are the ones that really count—and the ones that haven’t quite panned out, at least so far.
It’s Really Happening
The big deal battery breakthroughs all have something in common: They’re related to the lithium-ion battery. Other battery chemistries are out there—more on them later—but in the next decade, it’s going to be hard to catch up with the dominant battery form. “Lithium-ion is already very mature,” says Stoikou. Lots of players have invested big money in the technology, so “any new one is going to have to compete with the status quo.”
Lithium Iron Phosphate
Why it’s exciting: LFP batteries use iron and phosphate instead of pricier and harder-to-source nickel and cobalt, which are found in conventional lithium-ion batteries. They’re also more stable and slower to degrade after multiple charges. The upshot: LFP batteries can help bring down the cost of manufacturing an EV, an especially important data point while Western electrics struggle to compete, cost-wise, with conventional gas-powered cars. LFP batteries are already common in China, and they’re set to become more popular in European and American electric vehicles in the coming years.
Why it’s hard: LFP is less energy dense than alternatives, meaning you can’t pack as much charge—or range—into each battery.
More Nickel
Why it’s exciting: The increased nickel content in lithium nickel manganese cobalt batteries ups the energy density, meaning more range in a battery pack without much more size or weight. Also, more nickel can mean less cobalt, a metal that’s both expensive and ethically dubious to obtain.
Why it’s hard: Batteries with higher nickel content are potentially less stable, which means they carry a higher risk of cracking or thermal runaway—fires. This means battery-makers experimenting with different nickel content have to spend more time and energy on the careful design of their products. That extra fussiness means more expense. For this reason, expect to see more nickel use in batteries for higher-end EVs.
Dry Electrode Process
Why it’s exciting: Usually, battery electrodes are made by mixing materials into a solvent slurry, which then is applied to a metal current collector foil, dried, and pressed. The dry electrode process cuts down on the solvents by mixing the materials in dry powder form before application and lamination. Less solvent means fewer environmental and health and safety concerns. And getting rid of the drying process can save production time—and up efficiency—while reducing the physical footprint needed to manufacture batteries. This all can lead to cheaper manufacturing, “which should trickle down to make a cheaper car,” says Jaswani. Tesla has already incorporated a dry anode process into its battery-making. (The anode is the negative electrode that stores lithium ions while a battery is charging.) LG and Samsung SGI are also working on pilot production lines.
Why it’s hard: Using dry powders can be more technically complicated.
Cell-to-Pack
Why it’s exciting: In your standard electric vehicle battery, individual battery cells get grouped into modules, which are then assembled into packs. Not so in cell-to-pack, which puts cells directly into a pack structure without the middle module step. This lets battery-makers fit more battery into the same space, and can lead to some 50 additional miles of range and higher top speeds, says Jaswani. It also brings down manufacturing costs, savings that can be passed down to the car buyer. Big-time automakers including Tesla and BYD, plus Chinese battery giant CATL, are already using the tech.
Why it’s hard: Without modules, it can be harder to control thermal runaway and maintain the battery pack’s structure. Plus, cell-to-pack makes replacing a faulty battery cell much harder, which means smaller flaws can require opening or even replacing the entire pack.
Silicon Anodes
Why it’s exciting: Lithium-ion batteries have graphite anodes. Adding silicon to the mix, though, could have huge upsides: more energy storage (meaning longer driving ranges) and faster charging, potentially down to a blazing six to 10 minutes to top up. Tesla already mixes a bit of silicon into its graphite anodes, and other automakers—Mercedes-Benz, General Motors—say they’re getting close to mass production.
Why it’s hard: Silicon alloyed with lithium expands and contracts as it goes through the charging and discharging cycle, which can cause mechanical stress and even fracturing. Over time, this can lead to more dramatic battery capacity losses. For now, you’re more likely to find silicon anodes in smaller batteries, like those in phones or even motorcycles.
It’s Kind of Happening
The battery tech in the more speculative bucket has undergone plenty of testing. But it’s still not quite at a place where most manufacturers are building production lines and putting it into cars.
Sodium-Ion Batteries
Why it’s exciting: Sodium—it’s everywhere! Compared to lithium, the element is cheaper and easier to find and process, which means tracking down the materials to build sodium-ion batteries could give automakers a supply chain break. The batteries also seem to perform better in extreme temperatures, and are more stable. Chinese battery-maker CATL says it will start mass production of the batteries next year and that the batteries could eventually cover 40 percent of the Chinese passenger-vehicle market.
Why it’s hard: Sodium ions are heavier than their lithium counterparts, so they generally store less energy per battery pack. That could make them a better fit for battery storage than for vehicles. It’s also early days for this tech, which means fewer suppliers and fewer time-tested manufacturing processes.
Solid State Batteries
Why it’s exciting: Automakers have been promising for years that groundbreaking solid state batteries are right around the corner. That would be great, if true. This tech subs the liquid or gel electrolytes in a conventional li-ion battery for a solid electrolyte. These electrolytes should come in different chemistries, but they all have some big advantages: more energy density, faster charging, more durability, fewer safety risks (no liquid electrolyte means no leaks). Toyota says it will finally launch its first vehicles with solid state batteries in 2027 or 2028. BloombergNEF projects that by 2035, solid state batteries will account for 10 percent of EV and storage production.
Why it’s hard: Some solid electrolytes have a hard time at low temperatures. The biggest issues, however, have to do with manufacturing. Putting together these new batteries requires new equipment. It’s really hard to build defect-free layers of electrolyte. And the industry hasn’t come to an agreement about which solid electrolyte to use, which makes it hard to create supply chains.
Maybe It’ll Happen
Good ideas don’t always make a ton of sense in the real world.
Wireless Charging
Why it’s exciting: Park your car, get out, and have it charge up while you wait—no plugs required. Wireless charging could be the peak of convenience, and some automakers insist it’s coming. Porsche, for example, is showing off a prototype, with plans to roll out the real thing next year.
Why it’s hard: The issue, says Jaswani, is that the tech underlying the chargers we have right now works perfectly well and is much cheaper to install. He expects that eventually, wireless charging will show up in some restricted use cases—maybe in buses, for example, that could charge up throughout their routes if they stop on top of a charging pad. But this tech may never go truly mainstream, he says.
It’s nearly summer. Birds are migrating, flowers are blooming, and REI is kicking off its annual anniversary sale.
It’s the outdoor retailer’s biggest sale of the year. This year’s REI sale starts May 15 and runs through Memorial Day, May 25. Many items are up to 30 percent off, but REI Co-op members save up to 20 percent on any full-price item and an extra 20 percent off any REI Outlet item. To get the discount, add the promo code ANNIV26 at checkout.
We’ve highlighted the best deals on gear we’ve loved over our years of testing. There’s something for nearly all our favorite summer activities: tents, stoves, sleeping bags, and plenty of outdoor apparel. Be sure to look at our guides to outdoor gear, like the Best Tents, Best Sleeping Bags, Best Backpacking Sleeping Pads, Best Rain Jackets, Best Backpacking Water Filters, Best Merino Wool, and Best Binoculars.
WIRED Featured Deals
Deals on Camping Gadgets and Gear
Photograph: Scott Gilbertson
Goal Zero’s new Yeti 1500 is one of the best camping and overlanding power stations we’ve tested. The new LiFePO4 chemistry battery is rated for 4,000 charge cycles (about 10 years of average use) and there’s a new high amp output (30 A) for tying into van and overlanding setups. Goal Zero also engineered it to be able to handle the high vibration environment of off-roading. With 4 AC outlets and USB charging at up to 140 watts, the Yeti 1500 can keep your wired world running for well over a week, no grid required.
Yes your phone has some features of a dedicated satellite messenger, but we still think you’re better off with a dedicated device. Garmin’s new inReach Mini 3 now offers some of those phone features—like voice and photo messaging—along with the emergency features and excellent service world wide. It’s also still tiny, well built and it has great battery life. The cheaper Garmin Inreach Mini 3 (which does not have the new photo sharing features) is also on sale for $400 ($50 off).
The Garmin Instinct Solar is our favorite rugged and affordable outdoor watch powered by the sun. It has long battery life and yes, recharges any time it’s in the sun. GPS is enabled and there’s tons of sports tracking and navigation features. It’s cheaper than a Fenix and just as reliable.
Courtesy of Coleman
My favorite of Coleman’s current lineup, the Cascade 3-in-1 (8/10, WIRED Recommends) features heavy-duty cast iron grates, comes with a cast-iron griddle and grill, and can fit a 12-inch pan and a 10-inch pan side by side. It’s sturdier and all-around more robust than other Coleman stoves, well worth the extra money if you’re serious about camp cooking. That said, the much cheaper stove below will get you by if you’re only using it a few nights a year.
This is our favorite camp stove for most people. Technically this version is a little fancier than our top pick, with electronic ignition and a nice pale green paint job. Is it worth an extra $30? That’s up to you. If it’s not, snag the less fancy version for $59 at Walmart.
The thing to keep in mind when you shop REI brand gear is the company’s basic proposition: you get 90 percent of the designer item for 70 percent of the price. It’s a strategy that works quite well and has generated some really great, affordable gear. This chair is a good example of that. It’s not as nice as the Nemo above, but it’s still comfortable (it does wobble a little, side to side when you move) and nearly half the price.
Photograph: Scott Gilbertson
Whenever I can, I like to cook over open flame using my firebox stove, which often means cutting wood. The best portable saw I’ve found is this Silky folding saw. It’s light enough to bring bike packing (5.3 ounces), and it folds down to about 9 inches long, which slips in a pannier no problem. This thing is razor sharp though, be careful when using it in the backcountry.
Petzl’s Tikka headlamp is one of our favorite headlamps. It provides plenty of light to cook by in the backcountry, runs on three AAA batteries (we recommend Panasonic Eneloop rechargeable batteries) and lasts over 5.5 hours. It’s also compatible with Petzl’s USB-rechargable Core battery ($30).
The thing to keep in mind when you shop for gear bearing the REI brand is the company’s basic proposition: You get 90 percent of the designer item for 70 percent of the price. It’s a strategy that works quite well and has generated some really great, affordable gear. This REI chair is a good example of that. It’s not as nice as the Nemo above, but it’s still comfortable (it does wobble a little, side to side when you move) and nearly half the price.
Deals on Tents
REI tents are some of the best deals around, even more so during sales. If you’d like to learn more, see our guide to the best backpacking tents and best car camping tents.
Photograph: Scott Gilbertson
REI’s Base Camp tent is WIRED’s favorite car camping tent. It’s extremely well designed and proved plenty weatherproof in our testing. The traditional dome tent design, with two crossed poles and two side poles, holds up well in wind, and the tent floor is high-quality 150-denier (150D) polyester. There’s loads of storage pockets, double doors, great vents, and huge windows, making it comfortable even in summer heat.
The REI Half Dome 2 is the best budget two-person backpacking tent. I’ve toted it on many a backpacking trip and found it to be plenty sturdy, quick to set up, and capable of fitting two people and their gear. It even comes with a footprint (which I never bother with, but it’s nice to have it if you have to deal with prickers or pointy rocks).
The Big Agnes Copper Spur series is our top pick for freestanding ultralight tents. This is a high-quality, well-designed tent that’s lightweight, easy to set up, and roomy enough to be livable in the backcountry. The “awning” design (where the front fabric is held aloft with trekking poles or sticks) is a nice extra and the mix of 15D nylon, and 20D ripstop, while to feels fragile, as held up well over time. The 4-person version, which is one of the lightest 4P tents on the market is also on sale.
Nemo’s Dragonfly tents are great. I really like the generous amount of mesh at the top, which provides some nice ventilation on warm summer nights and is perfect for falling asleep under the stars when the weather permits. The Osmo fabric continues to live up to the hype, with much less water absorption than nylon tents in rainy weather, and there’s a good amount of room for storing all your stuff.
Sleeping Bag and Sleeping Pad Deals
Whether you need a cheap car camping bag or something more robust for fall and spring trips, we’ve got you covered. Be sure to read our guides to the best sleeping bags, best camping sleeping pads, and best backpacking sleeping pads for even more options.
Photograph: Scott Gilbertson
REI’s Magma line of down gear are some of the best deals around. The Magma 15 sleeping bag has long been an affordable bag that’s perfect for shoulder season trips when the temp potentially swing lower than you’re expecting (the comfort rating is 21 degrees Fahrenheit). There are three lengths and three widths, making it easy to get something that’s perfect for your body, and the 850-fill-power goose down (Bluesign-approved) packs down nice and small. If you don’t need the shoulder season coverage the Magma 30 is also on sale for $262 ($87 off), and makes a great summer sleeping bag.
I just spent a week sleeping under this quilt at the Biggest Week in American Birding. The Magma quilt was surprisingly warm. I did have on an puffer jacket, but I managed to stay comfy down to 30 degrees. Like the sleeping bag version above, this is 95 percent of what you get from far more expensive quilts. It’s light (20.3 ounces for the medium), packs down small, includes straps to keep it on your sleeping pad, can be completely unzipped and used like a comforter or snapped up in a proper foot box on colder nights.
-SOURCE-Scott-Gilbertson.jpg)
Photograph: Scott Gilbertson
This is one of my favorite ultralight sleeping bags. There are lighter quilts out there, but when you need the warmth of a mummy bag on those colder nights, this is what I use. It also has the smallest pack size of any bag I’ve tested in this temperature range. With the included compression sack, this thing is truly tiny. The down fill is PFC-free, 850+ hydrophobic down. The zippers are on the small side, but they slide well and rarely if ever snag on the bag. I’ve slept in this bag down to 20 degrees and never been the least bit cold.
Nemo’s Forte 20 is a 20-degree synthetic-fill sleeping bag, but the comfort rating is 30 degrees. In my testing, this feels more like where you’d want to stay temperature-wise with this bag. The outer shell uses a 30-denier recycled polyester ripstop with an inside liner made from 20-denier recycled polyester taffeta. The fill is what Nemo calls Zerofiber insulation, which is made from 100 percent postconsumer recycled content fibers. The Zerofiber packs down remarkably small—this is the most compact synthetic-fill bag I’ve tested in this temp range.
Photograph: Scott Gilbertson
I had to surrender my ultralight cred to the Reddit mods for carrying this robust pad, but it is totally worth the improved sleep. The 6 or so extra ounces is more than made up for by how well I sleep—rest and recovery are a key part of long miles, kids—on this pad compared to, well, every other backpacking sleeping pad. It’s that good. Alas, it is also kinda pricey … which is why you should grab one now on sale.
The Tensor All-Season hits all the sweet spots. It weighs an acceptably light 18.2 ounces, provides a good 3 inches of padding, and has an R value of 5.4. (The R value of a sleeping pad denotes its level of insulation; the higher the number, the warmer you stay and 5.4 is enough insulation for colder spring or autumn nights.) That works out to the best padding and R rating for the weight. It’s also mercifully quiet—none of that annoying crunching noise every time you roll over.
If you’re gearing up for a winter trip, this is a good deal on a great winter sleeping pad. The Tensor Extreme Conditions has the highest R value of any pad we’ve tested (8.5) yet somehow manages to pack down to about the size of a Nalgene water bottle and weighs just 21 ounces (587 g).
Courtesy of Exped
This is my new favorite winter sleeping pad. It doesn’t have quite the R-value of the Tensor Extreme above, but I find it more comfortable and when paired the a Therm-a-Rest Z-lite, I stayed plenty warm even on a night spent at minus 25 degrees Fahrenheit this past winter. I like it so much a bought a second one for whomever is foolish enough to come with me on such trips.
The big fat camping pad that started the trend of big fat camping pads, the Megamat is a revelation. Trust me, you have no idea how comfortable tent camping can be until you sleep on a Megamat. The 4-inch-thick Exped MegaMat is soft and surprisingly firm thanks to the closed-cell foam inside it, which relieves pressure and feels about as close to the mattress in your bedroom as you’re going to get in the woods.
When I sold my Jeep, I had to give up my overlanding dreams and return to being a mere camper. But this Megamat, which cuts in to fit around the wheel wells of an SUV, has brought some of those overlanding dreams back to life. I throw this in the back of my wife’s Rav4, and while it’s not a perfect fit (check Exped to see which vehicles are supported), it’s close enough that I can get a good night’s sleep in the car.
For more than a year, Tesla has shielded details about its robotaxi crashes from public view. Now, the company has published new details in a federal database about 17 incidents, which took place between July 2025 and March 2026. In at least two of them, Tesla’s human employees appear to have played a hand in the crashes by remotely driving the otherwise autonomous cars into objects on the street.
In both crashes, which happened in Austin, “safety monitors” were in the vehicles’ passenger seats to oversee the still-fledgling self-driving tech, and no passengers were riding in the cars. Both crashes occurred at speeds below 10 miles per hour. The new details were first reported by TechCrunch.
In one incident, which took place in July 2025, the safety monitor experienced “minor” injuries after a remote worker drove the Tesla up a curb and into a metal fence at 8 mph. The monitor, who had requested help from Tesla’s remote driving team after the car stopped on the side of a street and wouldn’t move forward, was not hospitalized, Tesla reported.
The other incident, in January 2026, happened after a safety monitor requested navigation help from the remote team. The remote driver took control and drove the car straight into a temporary construction barricade at 9 mph. The crash left the robotaxi’s front left fender and tire scraped up, but Tesla didn’t report any injuries.
Tesla, which does not have a public relations team, did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
The new details draw attention to an often misunderstood but safety-critical part of autonomous vehicle operations: the human backstops who remotely monitor the robot cars and intervene when they get into trouble. All US self-driving operators maintain these remote teams, according to letters submitted to a US senator earlier this year. But Tesla appears to be an outlier because it more frequently allows these remote workers to directly drive the cars.
Other companies typically allow their workers to remotely provide input to the autonomous vehicle software, which the system can choose to use or reject. (Waymo says that specially trained workers can remotely drive its cars up to 2 mph, but said in February that it hadn’t used that functionality outside of training.)
Safety advocates have raised questions about remote driving, which can be challenging in places without consistent cellular connectivity and in contexts where remote drivers need a perfect understanding of a car’s surroundings to guide it out of complex situations.
The new details on the two Tesla crashes “raise questions about what the teleoperator can see in both coverage and resolution, and what kind of latency they are experiencing while driving,” Noah Goodall, an independent self-driving vehicle researcher, tells WIRED in a message.
Tesla’s still-fledgling robotaxi service is operating in three Texas cities: Austin, Dallas, and Houston. But the service has fewer than 100 vehicles operating in total, compared to Waymo’s nearly 4,000. Less than half of Tesla’s cars appear to operate without a safety monitor sitting in the passenger seat. Reuters reported this week that service wait times in Houston and Dallas, where robotaxis launched in April, are upward of 35 minutes. Even in Austin, where the cars have been carrying passengers for almost a year, a reporter for the publication found that robotaxis were sometimes completely unavailable.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said that autonomous vehicles and robotics are the automaker’s focus instead of manufacturing electric cars. Musk’s compensation—a potential $1 trillion paycheck by 2035—is now tied to vehicle and robot deliveries, as well as sales of not-yet-released self-driving subscriptions and the number of robotaxis in commercial operation.
OpenAI told staff on Friday that it would reorganize the company as part of an ongoing effort to unify its product offerings, WIRED has learned. OpenAI cofounder and president Greg Brockman will now lead the company’s product strategy, in addition to his work on AI infrastructure, OpenAI confirms to WIRED. Brockman was previously assigned to oversee OpenAI products on an interim basis while CEO of AGI deployment, Fidji Simo, was on medical leave; the change is now official.
“We’re consolidating our product efforts to execute with maximum focus toward the agentic future, to win across both consumer and enterprise,” Brockman said in a memo to staff seen by WIRED. Brockman added that OpenAI’s products are naturally converging, and that the company has decided to merge ChatGPT and Codex into one unified experience.
OpenAI says it’s folding ChatGPT, its AI coding agent Codex, and its developer-facing API into one core product team. The company says that Codex is increasingly powering its consumer and enterprise offerings, which are gaining the ability to perform digital tasks autonomously on behalf of users.
Two other OpenAI leaders are also taking on larger roles at the company as part of the changes. OpenAI’s head of Codex, Thibault Sottiaux, has been tapped to lead the core product and platform across consumer, enterprise, and developer surfaces. Sottiaux was a key leader in building Codex into one of the company’s fastest-growing products of all time. OpenAI’s longtime head of ChatGPT, Nick Turley, is moving to a new role at the company that aims to revamp enterprise products. OpenAI says Turley will continue his work on ChatGPT, which he has helped grow to more than 900 million weekly active users since he took over in 2022.
The changes are the latest shakeup for OpenAI as leadership aims to refocus the company on a few key product areas, including ChatGPT, Codex, and its forthcoming “everything app.” Last month, OpenAI announced many executive changes, including that CEO of AGI dDeployment, Fidji Simo, was taking a medical leave to focus on her health. OpenAI previously said Brockman would oversee product strategy in her absence. The company tells WIRED that Simo remains on medical leave, and worked directly with Brockman on these organizational changes and product strategy.
In the last year, OpenAI has faced increasing pressure from competitors, including Anthropic in coding domains and Google in consumer chatbots. OpenAI leaders are hoping to simplify product offerings ahead of its plan to file for an IPO, which could happen later this year.
Other OpenAI executives left the company entirely last month, including the head of its AI workspace for scientists, Kevin Weil; head of Sora, Bill Peebles; and its chief technology officer of enterprise applications, Srinivas Narayanan.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
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