APPLICATIONS – TRANSPORTATION | Electric Vehicle: Batteries

Abstract

Since the early days of the automobile, battery electric vehicles (BEVs), which made up about 30% of the automobile population, survived in niches where zero-emission requirements, limited range, and well-defined driving profiles prevailed. Battery system development and BEV performance represent a push–pull couple. For industrial vehicles, the lead–acid battery was the workhorse as the cheapest and best-known energy storage system. Apart from this market, interest was always focused the substitution of the dominating internal combustion engine vehicle, which was conquered step by step by the BEV with improving batteries. The development of Li-ion batteries, which is not finished yet, has enabled electric vehicles (EVs) to satisfy more than 90% of the mobility needs of the growing urban and sub-urban society. Such BEVs have most of the time been demonstrators in character, and were built, if ever, only in small numbers, from about ten to one thousand. Considering the reducing carbon dioxide emission in utility grid energy production, battery vehicles offer the best chance to reduce traffic-generated carbon dioxide pollution and the dependence of on oil by diversifications of the primary energy. Both these facts are the main drivers for a sustainable mobility with EVs, backed by tax incentives.