Updating United States Advanced Battery Consortium and Department of Energy battery technology targets for battery electric vehicles

Abstract

Battery electric vehicles (BEVs) offer significant potential to reduce the nation's consumption of petroleum based products and the production of greenhouse gases however, their widespread adoption is limited largely by the cost and performance limitations of modern batteries. With recent growth in efforts to accelerate BEV adoption (e.g. the Department of Energy's (DOE) EV Everywhere Grand Challenge) and the age of existing BEV battery technology targets, there is sufficient motivation to re-evaluate the industry's technology targets for battery performance and cost. Herein we document the analysis process that supported the selection of the United States Advanced Battery Consortium's (USABC) updated BEV battery technology targets. Our technology agnostic approach identifies the necessary battery performance characteristics that will enable the vehicle level performance required for a commercially successful, mass market full BEV, as guided by the workgroup's OEM members. The result is an aggressive target, implying that batteries need to advance considerably before BEVs can be both cost and performance competitive with existing petroleum powered vehicles.