Hey kids! I bet that all of us have been excited at some point looking at the electric toy car going about on its own! Well, to be accurate on the battery And I am equally confident that all of us also remember the annoyance when the battery gets discharged after a few hours of play. And then its back to the new batteries or recharging the discharged ones. Well, some things are always fair. Adults have to deal with this too! And yes, they too have to charge their electric cars every now and then.
Today, most vehicles that you see around on the roads run on petrol, diesel or natural gas. The ones that are not so common yet but will be in the next few years, are the electric vehicles. These are vehicles that run at least partly on electricity. In the face of global warming, Earth running out of fossil fuels and the ever-increasing pollution, electric cars are probably our biggest beacon of hope for future transportation. They don’t use petrol or diesel, they also don’t have the issues of harmful emissions, engine noise and high costs. So, why are we all not using one yet?! Well, for one, the costs of the good electric cars are still higher than conventional petrol/diesel cars. Fortunately, with the progress in the technology and more people opting for electric cars, the prices will do down eventually. The bigger challenge currently is that they don’t go very far in one charging. Well, now you would think, why not just take a pit-stop (like at the petrol pump) and charge them again? Here’s the catch – they take anywhere between 6 to 12 hours to charge! This calls for the need to develop better batteries that can keep these vehicles running for longer. And this is exactly what many researchers all around the world are working towards – overcoming these challenges to make it possible for us to be able to go on those long drives in our electric vehicles.
Till now, Lithium-ion batteries are mostly used in electric vehicles. These are the same rechargeable batteries at your home, just a tad bigger. Go on, check out the Lithium-ion written on one of the rechargeable batteries lying around in the house! Many new methods have been developed to make these Lithium-ion batteries more efficient. One such technology is known as the solid-state batteries. It uses a solid electrolyte (the electron-carrying chemical used in the battery) in place of a liquid electrolyte. This allows the battery to provide higher electrical energy output without the use of any toxic electrolytes.
Its all about the batteries!
A battery typically consists of 3 parts – the anode (negative terminal), the cathode (positive terminal) and the electrolyte. Electrolyte is the medium that allows the electrons from positive terminal to move to the negative terminal, thus making electricity. QuantumScape, a leading company that makes batteries for the electric cars, have recently developed solid-state batteries that use a special solid ceramic material as the electrolyte. Interestingly, it’s not only the absence of the liquid electrolyte that makes these batteries special, these batteries do not have an anode, the negative terminal. Surprised, right! The trick is that when the Lithium ions move through the “special ceramic”, they create a thin layer of lithium-metal which acts as anode. Such a design modification makes these batteries more efficient, compact and safer to use. The CEO of QuantumScape, Mr. Jagdeep Singh says, “A car using its batteries could charge up to 80 percent of capacity in just 15 minutes compared to the potentially hour-plus charging times required for today’s electric vehicles.”
But sunshine is not here yet though it is definitely the dawn of an era of electric vehicles! Technology leaders expect that it will take a few more years before the electric vehicles equipped with these batteries will hit the roads. For any technology to become available to all, one must develop the ability to produce them in large numbers at a nominal cost.
Another challenge that needs to be overcome is that the electricity used to charge these vehicles should not contribute to global warming themselves! On an average, an electric vehicle uses 30 kWh (kilo Watt hour) electric power to travel about 160 kilometers. That is almost equal to the amount of electric power consumed to run a standard ceiling fan for 12 hours for an entire month! So, the revolution of “green” electric cars would be successful only if the necessary charging electricity is produced in the “green” way. Luckily, scientists are already on it! Soon, we may just be able to travel the entire length of India from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, in an electric car without the need for the charging stop-over and breathing much cleaner air!
