IBM’s Lithium-Air Battery Tech: The 500-Mile Electric Car?

IBM’s Lithium-Air Battery Tech: The 500-Mile Electric Car?

Posted on Apr 30, 2012 in Electric Vehicles by CFC 0 Comments

BY  ANTONY INGRAM

The only certainty of electric car technology is that nobody is really certain of our future path.

Dozens of different battery technologies are under development all around the world to fix the common battery limitations–limited energy density, heavy weight, long recharging times–and one such path is that of lithium-air batteries.

Computer and technology company IBM is taking the lithium-air route, and explains the workings of the battery in the video above.

The basic concept of a battery is to turn a chemical reaction into an electrical output. A lithium-air battery draws oxygen from the air around us, which reacts with lithium molecules inside the battery. This generates electrical energy which is then used to power the car.

When recharging, the opposite reaction takes place, and oxygen is fed back out into the atmosphere.

There’s a huge potential benefit to lithium-air batteries. They’re much more energy-dense–five times that of lithium-ion, and similar to gasoline. This enables them to be lighter. You can either install a far lighter battery than you would with a current lithium-ion unit, but maintain the same range, or install a much greater density of battery packs–enough for a 500-mile range in an average car–with no weight penalty over today’s units.

Read More / Source : Motor Authority

Tags: Electric Car, Electric Vehicle, Electric Vehicle Charger, EV, EV Battery, IBM, Lithium-Air