Did you have the budget but cancelled buying EV for the charging hassle? Does 300 Km give you range anxiety? Well, you are not the only one. Range anxiety is something that has been keeping people from buying EVs. To add to that there is a lack of charging infrastructure. Although it might take a few years to build the charging infrastructure, there might be a new breakthrough in battery technology which might make this Mumbai to Delhi in a Single charge possible. This new Technology is Lithium-Sulfur batteries. It has been developed by an Australian company which will be starting industrial trials soon, but to understand this better we need to understand what are the limitations of the existing technology.

Existing Technology

Most of the EVs in India and all over the world make use of Lithium-ion batteries. These batteries have a very high charge retain a time but the charging density is low. This results in a battery that performs consistently for a short period of time. These same batteries are successful in smartphones because a smartphone is not used continuously. If we look at the actual functioning of a Smartphone, even though it lasts us a day or two the screen time is generally half of it. But when the same type of battery is used in a car then it is being used continuously for a certain period of time. This depletes the battery faster. The carmakers have tried to address this by providing a start-stop system and various battery management programmes but what we are left with is a small range with a small battery.

The problem that we are facing is of energy density and weight. Currently, we are at the optimum level of the weight of batteries to the amount of power we can get out of it. So does this mean that EV will never be able to travel a large distance without charging hassle? So there is a need for new batteries with a higher driving range and faster charging at lower costs.

Also read: Tata Nexon EV set a trend!

Lithium-Sulfur

These aren’t completely new types of batteries. Scientists have been working on these batteries for more than 10 years now. These are potentially better at holding a larger charge in the same space if compared to lithium-ion batteries. The main problem that they faced was battery life. These batteries saw a degeneration of the sulfur and there were deposits of sulphide on the lithium anode.
Now there are a few companies like the Australian company Brighsun New Energy which claims they have potentially overcome these barriers and created a Lithium-Sulfur battery. If this battery is successful then we might have a future of seeing Electric vehicles with a range of around 5 to 6 times more than the current existing vehicle.

 

Lithium-Sulfur will also charge faster and will have a low carbon footprint as compared to the current batteries. Being a lighter technology it might unlock some amazing potential to make electric hypercars. We might also see its use in the Formula E races. The problem of faster charging might not be able to be tackled that well as the charging time for a Lithium-ion will be faster than this battery but the charge holding capacity of this battery will be much better and thereby provide a better range overall. To give you an idea of the weight difference all that we can say is that the new batteries will weigh half as much as the current batteries thereby making it easier to pack twice as many batteries than usual.

Also read: Hero uses this to increase the mileage of their bikes!

Testing and Progress

The Australian company has announced that they have started with the testing of these batteries for industrial trials. The company also says that on paper these batteries beat the current-gen of lithium-ion batteries by 5 to 6 times. Also, there are companies which produce such batteries for other purposes but they usually need high maintenance. We hope to see a major breakthrough in the electric mobility industry with such batteries. If the new wave of electric vehicles come with this new Lithium-Sulfur batteries then doing a Mumbai to Delhi in one single charge wont be an impossible task! Let us know in the comments if you have any queries or suggestions regarding this new Lithium Sulfur technology.

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  • how much time take to use this battery ev cars