Thanks President Obama.
New Research: Scientists Claim Better Battery for Electric Cars
Posted on Monday February 28th by Eric Jaffe
President Obama would like to see one million electric cars on American roads by 2015, but if initial reports are correct, the country will fall short of this goal. The demand for electrics is not terribly high right now, and until it is, automakers intend to limit production. One of the leading concerns among potential electric consumers is range anxiety: the fear of losing battery power far from a charging station.
Range anxiety probably has more to do with charging infrastructure than with battery technology. After all, the reason most drivers don’t fear running out of gas has far less to do with fuel efficiency than with the widespread availability of gas stations. Still, a better battery would certainly help the case for electric cars, and last week a team of scientists reported encouraging results for an “advanced lithium ion battery” being developed in their lab.
To create their Frankenstein, the researchers combined a high-performance anode with high-voltage cathode. The result is a battery with enhanced energy density; while a typical electric-vehicle battery might have an energy density of 120 to 150 watt-hours per kilogram, the new lithium battery can reach 170 Wh/kg. The potential here should be obvious to even the most dim-witted individual (with an advanced degree in electrical engineering), but in case you’re having an off day, the researchers spell out the general significance of their findings in a recent issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society:
To our knowledge, a lithium ion battery having this unique electrode combination has so far never been reported. On the basis of the performance demonstrated here, this battery is a top candidate for powering sustainable vehicles.
The battery is unlikely to reach assembly lines for several years, writes AltTransport, but similar breakthroughs can be expected more regularly as electric vehicles become a greater global concern. Just last week, Google acknowledged investing in Transphorm, a company looking at ways to improve the efficiency of energy conversion. Presently electric cars lose power by converting alternating current electricity to direct current. Transphorm reportedly can reduce this loss by up to 90 percent — extending a car’s range in the process.
infrastructurist.com |
