Lithium-ion has been the world’s workhorse battery technology for a couple of decades now. There are several newer technologies that are at or near the deployment stage.

The Chinese firm CATL, the world’s largest battery manufacturer, has already deployed sodium-ion battery packs in EVs from automakers including GAC and Changan.

Looking ahead however, CATL appears to have selected lithium-air battery tech as the path of the future. Speaking at the 2026 Equipment Power Forum, Wu Kai, Chief Scientist of CATL, identified lithium-air batteries as the primary focus of his company’s long-term battery research.

As Interesting Engineering explains, current lithium-ion batteries are sealed systems that rely on transition metals such as nickel, cobalt and manganese to form crystalline structures that host lithium ions. Lithium-air batteries eliminate the need for internal cathode host materials by using an open architecture that uses pure lithium metal as the negative electrode, and oxygen drawn from the surrounding air as the positive-electrode reactant.

Because lithium-air cells require less inactive material than lithium-ion cells, their potential to store energy is much higher. The theoretical specific energy of a non-aqueous Li–air battery is around 40 MJ/kg, comparable to that of gasoline (47 MJ/kg). Li-air batteries with specific energy of 6.12 MJ/kg at the cell level have been demonstrated in laboratories. (The term specific energy refers to the amount of energy stored per unit weight. The term energy density is often used incorrectly, but it refers to the amount of energy stored per unit volume.)

The drawback of lithium-air batteries (there’s always a drawback or two) is that they are highly sensitive to moisture and carbon dioxide in the air, which can cause rapid degradation, unstable catalyst performance and limited cycle life.

A research team from the Illinois Institute of Technology and Argonne National Laboratory demonstrated a potential solution in 2025. Earlier versions of lithium-air batteries produced lithium superoxide or lithium peroxide, compounds that reduced overall energy efficiency. The researchers demonstrated a four-electron reaction pathway that forms and decomposes lithium oxide, increasing available energy storage.

Source: Interesting Engineering