New battery expected to triple driving range of electric cars
04 Nov 2014
A new inexpensive battery that could triple the driving range of electric cars even while significantly lowering their cost could hit the market in just over a year, according to scientists, PTI reported.
The lithium battery, that experts bill as a potential game-changing "killer app" for the global car market, could also double the running life of a smartphone or a laptop, Dr Qichao Hu, who developed the device claims.
Hu and battery expert Donald Sadoway, had worked together at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Sadoway was reported as saying in a newspaper report that the impact of the battery on the cost and performance of an electric car could prove transformational.
The cost of batteries in existing cars works out as much as 30 per cent, additionally they need temperature control systems to stop them from overheating or catching fire.
The new battery operates safely at a wide range of temperatures, yielding significant saving in costs, said Hu.
Also the battery itself would be around 20 per cent cheaper than existing ones.
According to independent experts in the US, prototype cells in the battery could store over twice the amount of energy as conventional cells, the report said.
