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The battery is a critical component of electric vehicles. Apart from forming a good percentage of the sticker price, the battery pack can make up to one third of the gross weight of the car. This presents a challenge for design engineers who have to balance weight and range, in effect designing the vehicle to be able to bear the heavy weight of the battery that will make it move.
However, a radically new battery promises to fix that by eliminating the extra weight of the battery totally.
Join us as we explore the breakthrough MASSLESS BATTERY!
The Tesla range of EVs are excellent cars as they have some of the longest driving ranges in their class. For example, the Model S Long Range has more than 400 mile range.
That exceptional range comes at a weight cost to the vehicle. The 103.9 kWh battery that comes with the Model S weighs more than 500 kg.
Musk would like nothing more than to eliminate the weight entirely as it will dramatically increase the range.
Some years ago, that would have been a pipe dream, but a recent breakthrough in battery design makes it possible to do just that.
The exciting tech is known as structural or massless battery. More on the names later.
Researchers at the Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have been developing the battery for years. It looks set to revolutionize the electric vehicle industry especially.
One huge advantage of the structural battery is that it can drastically reduce the weight of the battery component to zero, giving the designer great latitude in turning their design concepts into reality.
The massless battery from Chalmers uses carbon fibre as both the electrode, conductor and load bearing material for the vehicle it is powering, meaning no need to allocate a separate mass for the battery.
In more practical terms, the body or structure of the electric vehicle is the battery or power source of the car. This is why the battery is known as structural battery.
The other name, "massless battery," is due to the fact that the mass of the battery is essentially zero as the vehicle will have a body anyway.
So Tesla can easily cut the weight of the Model S by a third by using massless batteries.
Carbon fibre is very fitting here because it is stiff, strong, and capable of storing electrical energy chemically. In fact, the use of carbon fibre in massless battery was ranked by Physics World as the top ten scientific breakthroughs of the year 2018.
Work on massless batteries however started earlier than that. Research on the battery began in 2007 by the US Army Research Laboratory. even though the breakthrough came this year.
The massless battery recently presented by the researchers at Chalmers had properties that far exceed what is offered by all other massless battery prototypes.
Its multifunctional nature makes it perform ten times better than earlier prototypes when its storage, stiffness, and strength are compared.
The battery has an energy density of 24 Wh/kg, which is about 20 percent of what present lithium-ion batteries offer.
However, the lower energy density is not an issue as the vehicle's weight is significantly reduced, meaning less mass for the massless battery to move.
Apart from that, the lower energy density results in increased safety from the point of view of the battery system.
Other prototypes of the massless battery were either robust mechanically or strong electrically. But with the use of carbon fibre, this latest prototype combines higher energy storage capacity and high structural rigidity.
This unique prototype was made from a negative electrode made from carbon fibre and a positive electrode made of aluminum foil coated with lithium-ion phosphate. The two electrodes are separated by a fiberglass material. The three layers are packed in a polymer electrolyte with high ionic conductivity before being cured in the oven.
The carbon fibre serves as the host for the lithium and stores the energy. Since the carbon fibre conducts electrons, there is no need for copper or silver conductors, resulting in even less weight.
The aluminum foil increases the mechanical properties of the battery. Besides giving the electrons a chance to move around, the electrolyte also transfers mechanical loads between the carbon fibre and other parts.
The end result is a tough flat battery cell with excellent conducting property and high tensile strength in all directions. The prototype has a stiffness of 25 GPa, well within the acceptable range for materials used in making vehicles.
Developing this breakthrough massless battery required the cooperation of researchers from different disciplines like material mechanics, materials engineering, applied electrochemistry, and fiber and polymer technology.
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