20 September/October 2023 | E-Mobility Engineering Rory Jackson reports on a new type of fast-charging battery and the Lotus demonstrator designed to show off its potential to OEMS and users The Lotus position Despite the pace at which sales of electric passenger vehicles are growing, and the promise they hold for lowering worldwide carbon emissions, there is a major conflict between the way EV designs are evolving and how that threatens to create serious problems for the sustainability of automotive supply chains. Historically, the primary deterrent to consumers adopting EVs has been range anxiety, given the comparatively lower MPGe of battery packs versus fuel tanks in IC-engined cars, and the far lower availability of charging points relative to fuelling stations. In response, automotive OEMs are building EVs with ever-larger batteries, with a view to enabling EVs to complete their day-today journeys and make it back home without needing to recharge. That though presupposes that every owner has the means to charge their EV overnight. Increasingly though, studies suggest that overnight charging will not be feasible on a widespread basis. One study, in the US, estimates that 78% of car owners do not have access to overnight charging, while another in the UK reports that 40% lack this capability, owing to factors such as living in areas without on-street chargers. However, if battery suppliers focus merely on making the batteries larger, it implies that demand for battery materials will grow, so more and more mines for extracting elements such as lithium, nickel and cobalt will be needed. That increases the risk of pollution, as well as of conflicts over associated mineral and labour rights. It also spells ever-higher material costs for batteries and exhaustive engineering into how OEMs can offset the increased weight of such packs in their vehicles. That in turn will lead to higher production costs for EVs and therefore a strong probability of EV prices increasing over time. To develop technologies that could resolve these issues and hence make the automotive world’s transition to clean energy as seamless as possible, Nyobolt was co-founded in 2019 by now-CEO Dr Sai Shivareddy and chief scientist Prof Clare Grey. “As EV sales grow, and the first generation of EV owners depend on home or public charging infrastructure, we’re seeing a stream of news reports about local and regional authorities establishing new waves of charging stations, which are increasingly very high power, fast-charging systems, often ranging up to 400 kW in Europe and 600 kW in China,” Dr Shivareddy says. “What the authorities fail to realise though is that, most of the time, there isn’t a single EV in any of their communities that can accept a 400 kW input for the charge duration – their batteries just aren’t designed for it. “But technologies become successful by working with what’s available. The first generation of EVs started with battery sizes of around 20-25 kWh, and didn’t see significant uptake. The next were engineered with packs that went up to 100 kWh to overcome the inconvenience of those smaller packs, and now, this new roll-out of EV chargers will be convenient only for EV owners whose packs are compatible with their very high input currents. “We have no wish to seek this compatibility through the traditional approach of building bigger, heavier and more expensive packs – it’s bad for EV
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