The technology continues to evolve and is expected to make further progress when it comes to capacity, charging capacity, safety, and service life. Porsche is directly involved in current developments through the Cellforce Group and Group14 Technologies.
High energy content, high performance, long service life, maximum safety—all at the lowest possible cost: Batteries in electric vehicles have to meet many requirements, which the dominant lithium-ion technology is already succeeding at quite well. Further improvements can, however, be made to almost all of its parameters, and researchers and industry are currently working intensively on doing just that. At the same time, potential successors are already lining up. It is no coincidence that lithium-ion batteries dominate today’s market: Lithium atoms are particularly keen to emit one of their three electrons, and lithium is also the lightest metal. This makes the element a popular raw material for batteries.
“Pure lithium is the ideal active anode material in terms of energy density,” says Dr. Stefanie Edelberg, Specialist Engineer Battery Cell at Porsche Engineering. “For safety reasons, however, graphites are currently used primarily as active anode materials that can absorb lithium ions.” In addition, the charging capacity of the batteries is very high and their price is relatively low. Added to this is their long service life: “1,500 to 3,000 full charge cycles until a residual capacity of 80 percent is reached does not present a problem,” says Dr. Falko Schappacher, Commercial and Technical Director of MEET Battery Research Center at the University of Münster (WWU). Car battery service lives of up to one million kilometers are now being predicted.