Volvo Developing Nano-Battery Tech Built Into Car Body Panels

cartechboy writes "Electric vehicle batteries have three problems — they're big, heavy, and expensive. But what if you could shift EV batteries away from being big blocks under the car and engineer them into the car itself? Research groups at Imperial College London working with Volvo have spent three years developing a way to do exactly that. The researchers are storing energy in nano structure batteries woven into carbon fiber--which can then be formed into car body panels. These panel-style batteries charge and store energy faster than normal EV batteries, and they are also lighter and more eco-friendly. The research team has built a Volvo S80 prototype featuring the panels where the battery panel material has been used for the trunk lid. With the materials used on the doors, roof and hood, estimated range for a mid-size electric car is around 80 miles."

Comments

Hazard

[Hatta]

Great, so now it's not just one battery pack in the back that's a fire risk, the whole exterior of the car could spontaneously combust at any moment. Oh, and good bye independant body shops.

Re:Hazard

[demonlapin]

Yeah, cost of repairing small damage just goes through the roof if you do this.

Re:Hazard

[mark-t]

Carbon fibre batteries don't pose that kind of fire risk.

Re:Hazard

[beckett]

Great, so now it's not just one battery pack in the back that's a fire risk, the whole exterior of the car could spontaneously combust at any moment. Oh, and good bye independant body shops.

Do you walk around with a phone thinking "in my pocket, near my crotch is a continuing, unending fire risk that occasionally makes phone calls".

A flaming car is an exceptional event, but say 'hello' to a rash of volvo body panel thefts!

Re:Hazard

[Virtucon]

Spontaneous Combustion? Naw, just a little water would be all that's needed and it wouldn't matter if the power source is one big lump, like a bunch of batteries next to each other or spread out all over the car, taking your house with it.

To your other point, auto manufacturers have been shifting more and more technology into cars which prevents your local mom and pop car repair from fixing them requiring dealer only servicing or programming services. Even then, you can't get things fixed properly, even with headlights. Auto manufacturers aren't the only ones trying to squeeze third party repair technicians out of the market, Nikon stopped selling parts to camera repair shops last year.

Re:Hazard

[Anonymous Coward]

The summary appears to be incorrect / misunderstood. The battery panels appear to sit alongside the bodywork, effectively filling in un-used space, not forming the bodywork itself.

Re:Hazard

[alexander_686]

Well, let me ask you a slightly different question. How much more expensive would a trunk panel be if it were a battery?

Cars are moving towards carbon fiber and other exotic materials today because of the reduction in weight and thus improvement in MPG. So let’s assume your car already had a fiber carbon trunk which is going to be expensive to repair. If the marginal cost to add the battery function is low then you would still be better off.

Re:Hazard

[P-niiice]

The cost will be marginal, but the price will not.

Re: Hazard

[binarylarry]

But we Slashdotters say Ni!

Re:Hazard

[ohieaux]

What exactly are the failure modes of these batteries? If they can charge more quickly, then the assumption would be that they discharge more quickly.

1) Failure due to short circuiting the capacitor via mechanical failure (accident)
2) Failure due to normal wear.
3) Failure due to material defects.
4) Failure due to improper installation...

Really, there are 100's of ways that the system could be compromised. Some may be mitigated with logic in the car to identify failing components. But, instantaneous failure modes must be accounted for.

And, when every panel contains power, could the jaws of life ever be used on one of these vehicles?

Re:Hazard

[Vanderhoth]

I'd like to think a positive for having expensive parts would be people might be a little more careful driving if they knew it would cost them $10,000 to replace a scratch on a door, but, seeing as how most people don't put that kind of value on their own lives, I guess that would be too much to ask.

Also there are still those jerks that ram shopping carts into new cars in parking lots. I only had my new car for three months when I came out of the store to a huge dent in the back passenger side door. I was quoted $2500 to have fixed at three separate places, so I decided the dent might make the car look ghetto and be a detente for would be thieves. Kept the $2500 and the "security enhancement" and haven't had so much as another scratch in the seven years I've had the car.

Re:Hazard

[mark-t]

I didn't say that they don't pose *ANY*... I said that they don't pose *THAT KIND OF*.

The fire hazard that exists in lithium batteries exists because of a potential for a chemical reaction between the lithium and any nearby moisture. Carbon fibre batteries pose no such danger at all.

That said, if sufficiently damaged, the result with a carbon fibre battery is approximately the same as when a capacitor gets damaged. It is shorted out and becomes useless. The energy is released in an instant when the short occurs, just like a static spark... but since pure carbon is not especially flammable (eg: diamonds) a fire is still not terribly likely (still theoretically possible, but unlikely).

Re:Hazard

[kheldan]

"spontaneously combust"

If by that you mean if you get in an accident and one or more battery packs gets physically damaged, self-discharges catastrophically, and starts a fire? Yes, I would consider that to be a serious drawback to this idea. Not that concentrating all your energy storage capacity in one place is all that much better (bigger BOOM! if damage occurs to it) but on the other hand having the battery pack in one central location on the vehicle makes it easier to protect and harder to damage in a garden-variety fender-bender. Think of it this way: What if you decided to distribute the gasoline storage capability of an internal-combustion engine automobile across lots of little tanks stored in the body panels? Insane, right? You'd never do it, it would turn the entire vehicle into one giant rolling fire hazard even worse than rear-endering an old Ford Pinto Runabout. While small battery packs distributed throughout the body panels is a significantly smaller risk than distributing gasoline throughout, it's still a risk. Of lesser but still considerable concern is the fact that an accident that leaves the vehicle otherwise functional/driveable could immediately and drastically reduce the total range-per-charge because of damaged battery packs. This is something that you couldn't as easily ignore as a crumpled fender or dented door.

So far as high-capacity battery packs and fire hazard from catastrophic self-discharge are concerned: Shouldn't there be (if there isn't already) some sort of fire-suppression/fire-control designed into the packs themselves, or at least mounted in the immediate vicinity of the battery packs? Something heat activated perhaps?

Re:Hazard

[lgw]

Anything that stores energy, particularly electrical energy, is a fire risk, particularly when it involves sudden grievous damage to the structure containing that energy

That's just not true. There are many ways of storing power. Take hydrogen for example: you can store power by cracking water to get it, but how do you store it? If you store it in some compressed gas form, you're asking for trouble. If you store it in a big low-pressure balloon on top the bus (people actually do this), the practical risk is low, since with any rupture the hydrogen will move up quickly. But you can also store it as an metal hydride, which requires electrical power to release at any speed. Yes, it can catch fire, but it will just burn slowly for a long time, and can be extinguished normally.

Another example are the kinetic batteries occasionally used by satellites - storing power in a flywheel sounds dangerous, but not if you make the flywheel of soft plastic, so that it lacks the structural integrity to fly off the axel and will instead just shred itself if damaged. That was prototyped for electric car battery use, but the need to gimbal-mount the batteries was prohibitive.

Really, for electric car batteries the bar is pretty low - as safe as a tank of gasoline. For home solar to ever really take off it will be a greater safety concern, at least if you want to store enough power to run your house for a day (which seems like a minimum to not need grid power). I do wonder if the flywheel concept might not be worth a second look for the home - weight no longer an issue, and no need for gimbals.

Re:Hazard

[Hatta]

pure carbon is not especially flammable (eg: diamonds)

Pure carbon is quite flammable. Try check out the MSDS for graphite. The problem with diamonds is their surface area is relatively low, but you can burn them slowly with a hot enough flame and high enough concentration of oxygen.

Re:Hazard

[Ungrounded Lightning]

If an impact creates a short through the surface, the energy of the battery will be dumped through the short, appearing as heat in the resistance of the (non-superconducting) short and the conductors leading to it.

If something isn't done to interrupt this discharge, the energy will be dumped as heat (and perhaps actinic light and vaporized material) at the short, the region around it, or the whole panel.

The trick will be to build the panel so that, in a crash, the breakage and/or the current from the short(s) itself will interrupt the circuit before a dangerous amount of the battery's stored energy is converted - rather than creating a cascading failure that releases the whole charge, surrounding the car's occupants with red-hot walls, white-hot walls, or clouds of incandescent vapor.

If there's one car company with a track record of focusing their engineering on keeping the car's occupants safe, it's Volvo.

Re:Hazard

[LoRdTAW]

Its wishful thinking if you think expensive parts will stop stupidity. If you are in an accident and a body panel costs ten grand who eats the cost? Why the insurance companies of course. The idiot driver doesn't have to worry about his ten grand door panel. In most states in the US you are required to have insurance except for Wisconsin and New Hampshire but they have stipulations regarding being able to pay for damages if you are at fault. So you are still left with shit drivers because the insurance company is a buffer to the high costs.

"I was quoted $2500 to have fixed at three separate places, so I decided the dent might make the car look ghetto and be a detente for would be thieves."

They don't want your car to drive around and look good in, they bring it to chop shops. The chop shops strip the car of all of its valuable parts and sell them to other service stations/body shops or launder then through distributors. The money is in the parts, not the appearance. That dent wont do shit to deter a crackhead car thief desperate for a fix. They get a few hundred bucks and the chop shop makes thousands off the parts. The only two reasons a car is stolen to drive around in is to move a dead body or move a large amount of drugs. The car is always torched afterwards to remove evidence. And its not like they are driving for a week its usually: steal car - immediately move the stuff FAST - torch the car. If you think it sounds far fetched consider a friend who had his car stolen with his kids christmas presents hidden in the back. At first it was obvious why the car was stolen: the christmas presents. But the car was found a week later, torched, with the remains of the presents inside. Nothing was removed and the cops said those two reasons are why cars are stolen and quickly torched.

And this brings us back to part one. If the car parts are ridiculously expensive, than cars are more valuable to car thieves. So you made a bad problem worse.

Re:Bring on the truly disposable cars!

[PPH]

Bubba whips out his power drill to mount a CB antenna on the fender.

Two major problems

[multimediavt]

1. If you're in a crash or just dent a body panel with this crap in it how much is that going to cost?

2. What happens when you need to replace the batteries because they don't hold a charge? You replace all the body panels?

I totally understand the "problems" with batteries in EVs. As the summary states "they're big, heavy, and expensive", but they also need to be serviceable, easily swapped or replaced, and then made smaller, lighter, cheaper over time. The barriers to EVs are gas/petrol stations. There's a lot of them! Sure, some have chargers now, but what EVs need are battery swap stations. Of course, this would also require a standard for battery placement, shape and technology to work, but the battery swapping (like propane tanks a la Blue Rhino) I feel is the best solution for competing with internal combustion based cars and the multitude of fueling stations available. Range issues all but disappear if I can pull over just about anywhere and swap out the battery for a fully charged new one in two minutes or less. Integrating batteries into other parts of the car seems dumb to me. Sure, something that makes electricity to help charge the battery pack would be nice, but batteries in body panels for a vehicle that runs on them? Don't see that as a good idea. Standardization of a battery pack and mass deployment of swap stations would be the big win for EVs. Going to be a while yet. Lots could happen.

Solution looking for a problem

[div_2n]

Having the batteries centralized like in the Tesla is a GOOD thing. They keep the center of gravity low on the car making it almost impossible to roll (seriously, the NHTSA had to specially design a scenario to get it to roll) and they make it possible to swap batteries for a quick charge which is going to be necessary unless the capacity of batteries can be increased by a factor of 10 with charge speeds doubled or tripled.

This is a step backwards in many ways not to mention the least of which is to necessarily increase the cost of mild accidents to replace the battery integrated pieces.

Re:Solar panels

[Nadaka]

It is if you park near the focus point of one of the parabolic death ray buildings.

Re:80-mile range? Keep trying...

[wagnerrp]

Which is retarded, because of all people, those buying pickup trucks (for actual utility use) should be clamoring over each other for electric versions. If you buy a truck (for reasons other than vanity), you do so to haul things, and if you're hauling things, you want low end torque. Electric motors handily outperform gasoline and diesel engines for low end torque. That's nearly all locomotives have been that way for decades, and modern heavy duty trucks use them rather than turbines.

Key scratches

[thisisauniqueid]

Finally, a good way to deal with people key-scratching your car.

Re:Two questions

[Herve5]

Here in France *all* electric cars come with a contract for batteries replacement. Otherwise it'd be catastrophically costly. And boy will you replace them. Having the whole car structure to replace instead of changing batteries to me is a kind of industrial suicide, unless you decide to throw your car away every two years...

Re:Energy storage = Kaboom?

[wagnerrp]

batteries store lots of energy that can be released in an accident.

As far as I can tell, these don't actually qualify as batteries, as there is no chemical reaction. They're capacitors. Of course, capacitors shorting out are not the greatest thing either. Arc flashes are not a fun thing to experience.

Additionally, how well do carbon fibres burn? Like a torch, or like a bomb?

Neither, really. Carbon fiber really doesn't burn. They use the stuff as thermal shielding on the leading edges of the Space Shuttle, and on high end ceramic brakes. Far too often do people conflate "carbon fiber" with "carbon fiber reinforced plastic". Carbon fiber is nothing but a fabric, and like any other fabric, it can't hold a shape. Unless you're just using it for rope or netting, you need some form of sheer matrix to give it stability, and thermoset plastics are simply convenient for that purpose. So obviously a plastic isn't going to hold up well to temperature, but metals and ceramics will, and there is no indication what these panels are to be made out of, other than a nebulous "carbon fiber".

Re:exchangeable battery packs

[wagnerrp]

These would have no trouble charging in that short amount of time. The more difficult issue would be developing a connector that could handle that kind of current, and do it safely while being handled by an ignorant public.

Re:Solar panels

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Wouldn't this work well with some kind of solar panel technology that charges the panels. You would never have to plug it in.

Only if you drive it no more than an hour a month.

A horsepower is almost exactly 3/4 kilowatt. A square yard gets about a kilowatt of raw sunshine at high noon. Factor in the efficiency of the solar panel, battery storage, and motor control and you're lucky to get a fifth of that. Call it a quarter-horse for each square yard of cross-secton as seen by the sun, if you're parked in the open on a clear day. A good, sunny, location might get five "solar hours" - equivalent of five hours of noontime sun - per day. So call it a tad over a horsepower hour per day.

Crusing at highway speed takes maybe 18 horsepower. (Acceleration much more, but only for a short time - but then you lose much of it with breaking - even regenerative breaking that scavenges some of it. So stop-and-go driving is substantially lower mileage than highway.)

Remember the intro to "The Jetsons", where George hits the button on his flying commuter car and it folds up into a briefcase? You need a car that does the opposite: Spread out over a half-acre when you park it. But your company probably won't want you to use that many parking spaces...

So you plug in your electric car, move to the planet Mercury, or wait for Mr Fusion to get cheap.