To be precise, experience the future of the automotive industry. Teslas, Nissan Leafs, and Toyota Priuses, or similar vehicles, are ubiquitous on the roads. Electric and hybrid vehicles intermingle with conventional gasoline-powered cars in traffic; and many companies, shopping centers, and homes have installed charging stations.
If electric vehicle manufacturers do indeed achieve their goals, this is a future we will all be living in at some point; they are investing heavily to make it a reality. The question is, how easy is it to transform demand from a small region into nationwide demand?
Elsewhere in California, Elon Musk's Tesla Motors recently proposed plans to build a giant battery factory in the undisclosed southwestern United States (the exact location of which has become a hot topic of discussion). This so-called "gigafactory" is expected to cost as much as $5 billion and is scheduled to produce enough lithium-ion batteries in 2020 to power 500,000 vehicles—an annual output exceeding the global annual production in 2013.
However, some believe that by the time the factory breaks ground, Tesla's plans will seem outdated. Phil Gott, senior planning director at IHS Automotive, a leading global provider of automotive business intelligence, believes Tesla's ambitious plans are "probably ill-considered." This is because new technologies under development promise to provide superior alternatives, addressing one of the biggest obstacles experts cite for electric vehicles.
The problem with electric vehicles is that batteries are large and heavy; therefore, the number of batteries that can be installed is limited. For example, the Tesla Model S's battery pack, laid flat on the car floor, is approximately 2 meters long and 1.2 meters wide. In high-end models, the battery pack provides about 300 miles (482 kilometers) of driving range before needing to be plugged into a charging station. The Nissan Leaf can travel about 80 miles (128 kilometers) on a single charge. Furthermore, the charging process is much slower than simply refueling.
So, how can we produce batteries with better performance? At its most basic level, a battery contains positive and negative electrodes, separators, and an electrolyte. Many different types of materials can be used as electrolytes, and different combinations of materials allow batteries to store different amounts of energy. However, if the materials change, the battery's range and safety characteristics will also change, so there are always compromises. Lithium-ion batteries are widely used, but there have been incidents of lithium-ion batteries short-circuiting and catching fire on airplanes, thus their transport is strictly restricted. Any battery that is more active or unstable poses a safety hazard. However, designing the optimal combination of materials could yield huge returns.
In the decades preceding this recent research, battery technology had undergone a series of improvements.
The first battery to be invented was the lead-acid battery, which is still widely used in automobiles today; these batteries are quite bulky. Next came the nickel-cadmium (NiCad) battery, a rechargeable battery that ushered in a new era where portable technology took center stage: mobile devices such as laptops and cell phones, and the remote-controlled cars we used as children. Then came the nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) battery, which roughly doubled the capacity or energy density. Now, modern devices and electric vehicles commonly use lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries.
Looking ahead, prepare for increasingly complex battery technologies, such as lithium-nickel-manganese-cobalt-oxygen (LiNiMnCo) batteries. The properties of this material are complex; currently, researchers are dedicated not only to understanding why these materials work, but also how they work—the fundamental physics of electron movement within them.
Daniel Abraham, a materials scientist at Argonne National Laboratory, said, "At Argonne National Laboratory, we are working on materials that have the potential to double the current energy density of batteries. We first dream or envision the materials we want to work with, and then try to synthesize them in the lab."
Currently, several promising battery technologies include lithium-air batteries (more precisely, lithium-oxygen batteries) and lithium-sulfur batteries. If they can operate normally under various conditions, lithium-oxygen batteries are expected to outperform current lithium-ion batteries by an entire order of magnitude. "This is a very hot research area right now," Abraham said.
Indeed, Volkswagen recently hinted that it is researching lithium-air batteries. Since development is not yet finalized, the specific chemical/material combination used by Volkswagen has not been revealed. The company's engineers are even reluctant to say whether the technology has been tested in cars or is still in the "test bench" stage.
However, while this technology holds the promise of being revolutionary, producing lithium-air batteries that operate continuously, reliably, and safely still faces a host of technical challenges. To date, tests have demonstrated that the electrodes are highly unstable.
However, laboratories around the world are working hard to crack this problem and try to overcome its various shortcomings. Hopefully, greater emphasis on these "super lithium-ion" technologies will ensure that the research and development process is accelerated and, in the long run, that cars can go faster and farther.
