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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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.