Volkswagen has just announced a battery developed by its partner QuantumScape, which displays unprecedented longevity.
One of the problems displayed by electric vehicles is the loss of battery life over years of use. Manufacturers estimate that a lithium-ion battery that has completed 1000 cycles, which corresponds to roughly a decade of use, sees its storage capacity drop to around 70% of its original capacity. A problem which could be solved in the future by a solid state battery made in Volkswagen.
500,000 kilometers, and a battery almost still intact
Could solid-state batteries be the future of electric cars? We might think so, if we look at the announcement Volkswagen has just made. The American company QuantumScape, of which the German group is the majority shareholder, successfully completed tests on its solid-state battery showing that it retained 95% of its capacity after 1000 cycles.
As the automaker explains, “ for an electric car with a range of 500 km to 600 km in the WLTP cycle, this corresponds to a total distance of more than half a million kilometers. »
We will still have to wait
To achieve this result, QuantumScape tested cells with different numbers of layers, finally arriving at this 24-layer cell, which appears to be the winning solution. And that could give it an edge over the competition.
“ To our knowledge, no other lithium-metal automotive battery has demonstrated such retention of discharge energy over a comparable number of cycles, under the same conditions. » welcomed QuantumScape founder and president Jagdeep Singh.
However, for the moment, this is a laboratory experiment. “ We still have work to do to bring this technology to market » admits the manager. So, when will we be able to see a Volkswagen ID.7 equipped with this battery?
Source : Volkswagen, PC Mag
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