1000 km range thanks to a new battery concept

Wie kann der Platzbedarf von Batteriespeichern verringert werden? Forscher des Fraunhofer Instituts arbeiten an einem Konzept.

1000 km range thanks to a new battery concept

You cannot get far today with electric cars. One reason is that the batteries require a lot of space. Fraunhofer scientists are stacking large cells on top of one another. This provides vehicles with more power. Initial tests in the laboratory have been positive. In the medium term, the project partners are striving to achieve a range of 1000 kilometers for electric vehicles.

Depending on the model, electric cars are equipped with hundreds to thousands of separate battery cells. Each one is surrounded by a housing, connected to the car via terminals and cables, and monitored by sensors. The housing and contacting take up more than 50 percent of the space. Therefore, the cells cannot be densely packed together as preferred. The complex design steals space. A further problem: Electrical resistances, which reduce the power, are generated at the connections of the small-scale cells.

Under the brand name EMBATT, the Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems IKTS in Dresden and its partners have transferred the bipolar principle known from fuel cells to the lithium battery (figure 1). In this approach, individual battery cells are not strung separately side-by-side in small sections; instead, they are stacked directly one above the other across a large area. The entire structure for the housing and the contacting is therefore eliminated. As a result, more batteries fit into the car. Through the direct connection of the cells in the stack, the current flows over the entire surface of the battery. The electrical resistance is thereby considerably reduced. The electrodes of the battery are designed to release and absorb energy very quickly.