Recently, the laboratory of Jeff Dahn, a long-term research partner of Tesla and professor at Dalhousie University, recently published a paper in the Journal of Electrochemical Society SCI journal , said that his team has created a brand new battery design.
(Picture from the website of the Journal of the Electrochemical Society)
The cooperation between Dalhousie University, where Dahn teaches, and Tesla began in June 2016. His laboratory team has contributed a large number of battery patents and papers to Tesla. As early as January last year, Tesla and the laboratory renewed a five-year industrial research partnership agreement, which is probably one of the reasons why Tesla's power battery technology has made rapid progress.
According to Xiao Lei, the research focus of the Tesla cooperation team is not the mainstream lithium battery of electric vehicle , but the use of nickel-based battery (NMC) to increase the number of charging cycles. The study found that compared with the lithium iron phosphate battery (LFP), nickel-based battery with balanced charge to 3.8V has better Coulomb efficiency, charging attenuation, and higher energy density. can have a theoretical life span of up to 100 years in a 25-degree Celsius environment.
(Picture from Pixabay)
In terms of energy density that everyone is more concerned about, the performance of nickel-based batteries is also quite good, up to 495Wh/L, higher than the 425Wh/L of lithium iron phosphate batteries. This is equivalent to the fact that under the same volume, the battery life of nickel-based batteries is stronger than that of lithium iron phosphate .
Of course, everyone should know that only under ideal circumstances can the service life of a nickel-based battery reach a theoretical 100 years. In fact, various factors such as the battery working environment and the driving habits of the car owner also have a great impact on the battery's capacity attenuation speed. However, Xiao Lei believes that the battery life can last for about 30 years, which is enough to eliminate fuel vehicles. If the nickel-based batteries produced by the team can be as powerful as the research report and can be mass-produced on a large scale, it will inevitably effectively promote the popularization of electric vehicles.
(Picture from Tesla's official website)
Nowadays, domestic fuel prices are soaring, but many people are still unwilling to buy electric cars. On the one hand, charging is slow and difficult to charge, and on the other hand, it is the lithium battery mainly used in electric cars. The capacity attenuation of is still relatively serious, and the cost of replacing a battery is too high, and it can even offset the fuel cost for several years.
Currently, the price of lithium batteries has soared. Tesla, CATL and other companies are all committed to optimizing the power battery structure, ensuring that performance does not decline while optimizing the structure and reducing manufacturing costs. In addition, these large battery manufacturers are also looking for a solution that can replace lithium batteries, which are easy to obtain and recycle. In Xiao Lei's view, if nickel-based batteries can surpass lithium batteries in terms of density, service life, stability and other indicators, it is still worth promoting.
