After decades of iteration, the lithium-ion battery industry faces a fundamental crossroads. While chemistries and materials have evolved, the core battery architecture has remained largely unchanged since its introduction more than 30 years ago. But as demand grows for safer, more affordable, and higher-performing batteries, especially for electric vehicles (EVs), cracks are beginning to show in the legacy design.
Naoki Ota, President and CEO of 24M Technologies.
Naoki Ota, President and CEO of 24M Technologies, believes it’s time for a complete reset. A veteran of the battery industry with more than three decades of experience (from the early days of lithium-ion development in Japan to large-scale US manufacturing), Ota has led innovation across consumer, automotive, and grid storage applications.
In this interview, Ota explains why the status quo can no longer support the next wave of electrification. He discusses the limitations of the conventional platform, how rethinking battery architecture unlocks new pathways for safety and cost reduction, and what it will take for the US to lead in next-generation battery design.
Here’s what he had to say…
Why is it time to rethink the foundational design of the battery?
For more than 30 years, lithium-ion batteries have followed the same fundamental design. While materials, chemistry, and manufacturing have improved, the architecture itself has barely changed since Sony’s original breakthrough.
That legacy platform is now a bottleneck, limiting cost reductions and creating inflexible designs that hinder safety and performance gains. It’s like updating apps without ever upgrading the operating system — you eventually hit a wall.
What’s needed isn’t just refinement but a reset. Rethinking battery architecture to meet today’s applications offers a chance to solve key challenges in ways traditional formats cannot. Done right, this shift could give the US not just a competitive edge but a chance to redefine the battery game entirely.
What’s the problem with optimizing legacy battery designs?
Working with the legacy platform, the battery industry has made meaningful improvements to battery performance and cost, but we’re hitting an inflection point. The problem isn’t just that gains are getting smaller. It’s that we’re building on a 35-year-old foundation that was never designed for today’s applications. The architecture of the conventional battery pack is inherently limited and somewhat flawed.
These limitations show up in ways that matter: increasing numbers and intensities of fires, persistent material waste, thermal management challenges, and rigid form factors that constrain integration and manufacturability. Tuning materials or refining processes can offer temporary relief, but it doesn’t resolve the core challenges.
For example, cells made today for today’s applications are still based on the platform Sony established in 1991. That platform was designed for portable electronics where batteries were typically small, less than a few hundred watts, often far less, low-voltage, four to 18 volts, and low energy density, under 200 Wh/l.
Despite manufacturing advancements, conventional lithium-ion battery designs still rely on a 30-year-old architecture. Unlocking new performance thresholds will require reimagining cell structure, form factor, and production processes from the ground up.
But today, we are forcing that same platform to serve applications that require extremely large batteries, with high voltages and high energy densities it was never intended for. For example, EV systems can be over 100 kWh and operate at 300 to 1200 V, with 300 to 700 Wh/l energy densities.
The issues we see today, particularly around increasing numbers of fires, are the result of the inherent tradeoffs this platform requires for these applications. And future requirements will only magnify these challenges. It’s like trying to build a taller and taller building on a crumbling foundation.
Over time, people attempted to make uniform cell sizes (VDA, MEB, etc.), with limited success. The challenge with this approach is that it limits the design of the system or vehicle to the specifications of a suboptimal battery. So, if you want to make even the slightest change to the system that impacts cell size or voltage, you’re forced to restart the process from the beginning.
What we need is a new, flexible platform that accommodates the size and voltage unique to each customer and every model, something that the legacy system cannot do. Furthermore, this new platform must be built with safety and performance by design, moving away from the exclusive process control model of today’s manufacturing. That legacy approach adds significant cost and risk, leading to fires, mass recalls, and loss of consumer confidence, as it requires far too many process controls and lacks sufficient detection and protection capabilities.
How does redesigning from the ground up unlock new innovation potential?
In many cases, engineers are forced to trade one performance metric for another. Want higher energy density? You might sacrifice safety. Aiming for faster manufacturing? You risk yield or complexity.
Today’s solutions often compromise one to improve another, but at this stage of EV adoption and global competition, we can’t afford that kind of tradeoff.
To break the cycle and truly bend the innovation curve, it’s necessary to address the core, which is the battery architecture itself. A stronger foundation provides engineers with the ability to break out of legacy design constraints. Instead of adapting new ideas to fit outdated formats, it’s possible to design batteries that align with today’s performance, manufacturing, and integration needs from the start.
As noted, the key is to create a new and simplified, yet still flexible, design platform that can improve energy density, safety, and performance while also reducing costs. This opens the door to entirely new cell designs, formats, and production methods. These include the type that enable faster development cycles, broader application flexibility, and simpler paths to scale. It’s not just about doing more with less; it’s about enabling innovations that simply are not possible within conventional design constraints.
How does foundational battery redesigns address critical challenges, such as safety, cost, and performance?
Tackling today’s chemistry challenges requires rethinking how batteries are designed and built so that safety, performance, and cost can all be improved, rather than trading one off against another. Platform must be flexible and fully harmonized to address all the obstacles that confront the EV industry.
Instead of relying on external protections or cost-cutting measures that risk reliability, the industry needs to move toward solutions that integrate safety directly into cell architecture, simplify manufacturing to reduce costs, and use advanced, functional materials and chemistries to boost energy density, battery lifespan, overall safety, low-temperature performance, and rapid charge capabilities.
Engineers are working to address these challenges at the core, developing new technologies that fundamentally make batteries safer, more affordable, and more capable for modern applications. For instance, newer battery technology is rethinking safety at the source: the electrode.
By embedding protection directly into the battery’s structure, dendrite formation can be suppressed, reducing the risk of internal short circuits and enabling safer, localized shutdown of individual cells. This proactively mitigates failure before it can propagate.
How does this shift in thinking give the US a competitive edge?
This shift in thinking can give the US a competitive edge because it leverages the nation’s strengths in innovation and disruptive technologies. By focusing on developing a next-generation battery platform and setting new global standards, it’s possible to lead in the EV industry instead of playing a catch-up game.
This approach enables the creation of American-made solutions tailored to domestic capabilities and resources, fostering a more resilient and independent supply chain. Simply copying others won’t close the gap. Still, by innovating at the fundamental level, the US can define the future of energy storage and secure long-term leadership in this critical sector.
Advanced battery platforms must perform reliably across demanding real-world conditions, whether in extreme cold, varied terrain, or high-power EV applications. The goal of rethinking battery architecture is to ensure better safety, efficiency, and performance across diverse use cases.
What are the primary challenges the battery industry must overcome to support the next wave of EV growth and shape future innovation?
The next phase of EV growth brings mounting pressure on multiple fronts. The industry must simultaneously improve safety and performance while reducing costs and improving recyclability. Combine this with supply chain constraints that accelerate the push for alternative materials and regional sourcing.
At the same time, manufacturers must scale rapidly and cost-effectively to compete against larger and more experienced manufacturers, all without sacrificing quality or safety. In this dynamic, high energy density and fast charging must now be balanced with safety, cost, recyclability, and environmental impact.
Together, all these forces reshape our innovation priorities — evolving from incremental improvements to fundamental changes that enable smarter, more integrated architectures to solve multiple challenges at once.
By addressing these barriers simultaneously, next-gen battery design can help make EVs more affordable, accessible, and appealing to a broader market, ultimately accelerating adoption and industry growth.
How do you see battery design and manufacturing evolving over the next decade to meet the demands of EVs and grid storage?
We’re entering an era where battery design must become simpler, safer, more flexible, and rapidly scalable, not as an afterthought, but by default. Legacy architectures will give way to platforms that eliminate unnecessary complexity and unlock new performance thresholds. That’s why new platforms must be more flexible to ultimately fulfill the requirements in all areas and with every customer model.
Batteries won’t just keep up with innovation in EVs, grid storage, and consumer electronics; they’ll actively enable it by meeting demands for faster charging, longer range, greater safety, and lower costs. As decades-old barriers start to fall, batteries will unlock new possibilities for more powerful, flexible, and accessible technologies across these industries.
What’s ahead is the establishment of a new standard. One that redefines what energy technology can do when we stop trying to optimize the past and instead start building what’s next and fundamentally, radically new.
You may also like:
Filed Under: EVs, FAQs, Featured