The battery of the future

Nobody escapes the fact that the future of the automotive industry goes through electrification. Currently there are many brands that are committed to the micro hybridization of their engines, but this is only an intermediate step between the car powered by fossil fuel and the electric car.

The great bet of the electric car requires an optimization in the size and operation of the battery . On the one hand, it is almost mandatory to offer similar levels of autonomy and charging times that can compete with vehicles equipped with internal combustion engines. On the other hand, it also becomes imperative to reduce the weight of a battery. For example, a Renault Zoe weighs 1,545 kilos and a Renault Clio TCe 66 weighs 1,082 kilos.

Short term

In a period of four or five years we will be able to see electric vehicles with a real autonomy of about 600 kilometers thanks to the technical improvements applied to the battery.

Cars like the Opel Ampera-e equip one of the most modern batteries currently manufactured. Manufactured by LG Chem, the battery in this Opel is made from a combination of cobalt, lithium, manganese and nickel capable of generating enough electricity to move the car for about 350 kilometers in real conditions of use.

This type of compound battery has a useful life that doubles that of current lithium ion batteries, although it is also true that it weighs approximately ten percent more than current batteries and that the cost of producing them increases by more or less the same percentage.

Solid electrolyte battery

Expected for the year 2020,  a solid electrolyte has more density than a liquid one and allows this type of battery to store more energy than, for example, a lithium salt battery. It also minimizes the appearance of dendrites , repetitive structures characteristic of the first phases of crystal growth and that can produce short circuits within the battery.

These dendrites, due to their chemical composition, are bodies that may or may not be conductors of electrical energy. For example, ionic and covalent crystals offer a lot of resistance to the conduction of heat and/or electricity, and molecular crystals are totally insulating in this regard. These three types of crystals limit the charging capacity of the battery, since in its formation the electrolyte is destroyed and, therefore, the electrolysis process is limited.

There is a fourth type of crystals, the metallic ones, which are characterized by having few electrons in the outermost layers and being positively charged. This means that in its formation it destroys the electrolyte and also, once the molecule is formed, it absorbs the negatively charged electrons that are stored. This is called chemical stability in the valence shell, which translated means that all molecules tend to have eight electrons (stability) in their last shell (valence shell).

The advantages of the solid electrolyte battery is that it heats up much less and is less prone to degradation , which means that it is able to maintain its storage capacity for many more charging processes.

Graphene in the battery of the future

For years, scientific research programs have been thinking a thousand and one times about graphene, that material composed of pure carbon arranged in a regular hexagonal pattern that seems to be present in all aspects of our daily lives as long as it is possible to lower the current price of US$300 per gram, of course. Of course, once the price drops, it is expected that graphene will also reach the battery of the electric car.

According to what was experienced in the first prototypes, a graphene battery has an energy density that is five times that of current lithium batteries , due to its chemical composition the risk of explosion is almost zero and in the event of a short circuit only the part would be inoperative. damaged.

Among the advantages of the graphene battery in relation to the current ones is its greater capacity, its lower weight for equal volume and its unbeatable charging capacity, ( a 100 kWh battery could be charged in less than ten minutes ).

Among its disadvantages we can highlight that they would not reach the market before ten or fifteen years and that the only Spanish company dedicated to the investigation of graphene batteries, and which was a world reference, has recently been accused of fraud and is being investigated by the National Securities Market Commission.

When I was little they said that in the year 2000 cars would fly and would not have a driver. I would like to return to this article in the year 2030 and be able to analyze what the current forecasts are . Of course, something tells me that the evolution of batteries will surprise us year after year.