By imagining the entire body of the car as one giant battery, designers of Sweden's safest car may have found a way to make EVs lighter and more powerful.
Batteries for electric cars are bulky and heavy. Adding batteries in to extend the EV's range, only makes the car heavier, which just requires more power to go the same distance as before.
In the interests of creating more power with less weight, engineers at Volvo have been working with scientists at Imperial College in London to develop a composite blend of carbon fibers and polymer resin that can store and charge more energy faster than conventional batteries can.
If successful, this light-weight composite could then be used to form the car's body panels while also functioning as a battery, storing and releasing energy.
The planned material could be produced without any chemical processes, which would make recharge times much faster than conventional batteries. With no chemical reaction necessary, this recharging process causes little degradation in the composite material over time, meaning the "whole car battery" would last much longer than traditional cells.
"The future applications for this material don’t stop there – you might have a mobile phone that is as thin as a credit card because it no longer needs a bulky battery, or a laptop that can draw energy from its casing so it can run for a longer time without recharging," said project coordinator, Dr Emile Greenhalgh. "We’re at the first stage of this project and there is a long way to go, but we think our composite material shows real promise.” (Imperial College).
Although the concept is still in its earliest stages of development, scientists imagine that the composite will replace the metal flooring in the recessed compartment of the car's trunk, called the wheel well, which holds the spare wheel.
By replacing the now metal wheel well with a composite one, Volvo could be able to reduce the number of batteries needed to power an electric motor. They believe this could lead to a 15 percent reduction in the car's overall weight, which should significantly improve the range of future hybrid cars.
Like a normal battery, the future Volvo hybrids will still be charged by plugging into household power supply or EV charging station. The researchers are also exploring other alternatives for charging it such as recycling energy created when a car brakes.
No word yet on how replacing steel body parts with composite components might affect the legendary safety of Volvo vehicles.
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Sounds good, but… I hope the resources for those batteries won’t run low and the batteries won’t pose a toxic problem when they expire. I also can’t wait for a good power source to load batteries – Bloomboxes sound good to me.
We are seeing a lot of proposals about pollution, global warming, fossil fuels, and alternative energy sources. I think they are all missing the point. The real problem is too many people on the planet using too much energy. The most basic law of physics is the law of conservation of energy. All energy, from whatever source, eventually becomes heat.
If you create electricity from hydroelectric plants, cleaner even than nuclear plants, making the electricity creates heat. Turning the turbines creates heat, running the generators creates heat. Transmitting the electricity through wires creates heat from the electrical resistance. Using the electricity creates heat. For that matter, building the dams, turbines, and generators all create heat and often other environmental pollutants.
It’s an unavoidable law of nature. All energy creation and use makes heat. Reduce the number of people on the planet by maybe 1/2 and most environmental problems are solved.
Wind energy? The bird kill problem would be solved by a different design for windmills. Vertical axis designs have been demonstrated that are more efficient, do not kill birds, and are cheaper to make. Even so, when you build them and their necessary generators and electronics, you create heat and other pollutants.
So the real problem is heat pollution, yes, there is accompanying problems of CO2 emissions, particulate pollution and all of the others. Each of those is possible to solve. But the heat pollution will remain and will continue to get worse until the world population is substantially reduced.
I’m not sure that putting batteries in the door panels is such a great idea considering how often they get hit.
Ouroborus: I’m happy to see that I am not the only one wondering about this. It seems that it might be OK as far safety goes as there are not caustic chemicals involved. But I have to wonder how expensive that would make fender benders to repair. Aren’t insurance rates high enough now? Why provide them with another excuse to raise them even more?