To put that into perspective, on a cold winter’s day, a typical Scottish commuter could just about drive their ‘average’ EV from Glasgow to Edinburgh and back, provided they plugged in while at work and layered up for the journey.įast forward to 2020 and the median electric car range was 259 miles - over 3.8 times as far! This figure was (of course) only achievable on paper, in the right driving conditions, and (probably) with the heating turned off. When the first mass-market EVs launched over a decade ago, the median electric range was just 68 miles. That’s the feeling an EV owner gets when they don’t know whether they’ll make it to the next charging point. If you’ve ever owned an EV, or if you know someone who has, chances are you’ve heard of ‘range anxiety’. It greatly reduces the risk of fire and allows for more energy dense battery packs with a longer-life expectancy and even faster charging.Īccording to Toyota, we can expect solid state batteries to be in production as early as 2025. This has big implications for how an EV battery works. Battery cells would use a ceramic electrolyte instead of the organic liquids seen in today’s Li-ion batteries. Solid-state batteries offer one of the most promising future alternatives to current EV battery technologies. One major downside, however, is that sodium is heavier and less suitable for storing energy than lithium. For example, sodium-ion batteries are fast-gaining interest due to their lower cost. But there are also potential alternatives to lithium. Lithium remains relatively rare, and this has prompted geologists to seek out new sources. Once production is scaled up, they could make EVs cheaper than with petrol/diesel cars, and offer a range of other benefits, including greater energy density, and strong performance in temperatures as low as -30 degrees or as high as 60 degrees. Researchers are also looking into lithium-sulphur batteries as a way to eliminate expensive metals like cobalt and nickel from the equation. But researchers have found that lithium iron phosphate batteries (LFP), can be both cheaper and safer, with better thermal and chemical stability. The most widely used lithium-ion battery chemistry is lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide (NMC).
When compared to the lead-acid 12V battery found in all conventional cars, lithium-ion batteries are more efficient and three times longer-lasting.īut they’re not without their faults. Launched in 1991, the lithium-ion battery is the most common electric car battery type, following on from its success in an array of consumer devices such as smartphones and laptops. Most electric car batteries are made of a combination of metals like lithium, cobalt and nickel. In the future, the chemical composition of electric car batteries will definitely change.
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