Engineers Develop Electric Car Battery That Can Heat Itself During Winter (popularmechanics.com)

Engineers at Penn State have created a battery that can self-heat, allowing for rapid charging regardless of the outside cold. The battery can reportedly provide a 15-minute rapid charge at all temperatures, even when the cold is as low as minus 45 degrees Fahrenheit. Popular Mechanics reports: Batteries have both positive and negative terminals. The scientists placed thin nickel foil with one end attached to the negative terminal and the other end creating a third terminal. When a temperature sensor attached to a battery detects that the battery is below room temperature, it then sends electrons flowing through the nickel foil. This heats the battery up until it's above room temperature again. When the sensor detects that the battery is above room temperature, that's the sign that charging that can begin again. Electric current flows into the battery, rapidly charging in a more efficient state. After 4,500 cycles of testing, the new battery only showed a 20 percent capacity loss, which could provide approximately 280,000 miles of driving and a lifetime of 12.5 years. This is compared to a conventional battery that "showed a 20 percent capacity loss after only 50 charges," reports Popular Mechanics. Penn State released a press statement with more details.

Comments

Cycles vs. Miles

[crow]

If they say it can go 4500 cycles with a 20% degradation, then assuming a linear drop, a total distance of 280,000 miles implies...

280000/4500/0.9 -> 70 miles of range.

That's a compliance car. Even the Leaf is over 100 miles now, and most are over 200.

Re:so.. they 'invented' this?

[geoskd]

essentially a resistance heater in an electricity storage device.. for when the natural heat generated from charging isn't 'enough' to keep a suitable temperature? wow. it took 'til 2018 to come up with that?

Car makers (Tesla not withstanding) are remarkably inept at designing and manufacturing electric systems. They primarily consist of mechanical engineers who think all batteries work like lead acid batteries.

The first hybrid cars that came to market continuously trickle charged the lithium packs, and had absolutely no environmental controls on the packs. This caused the batteries to wear out within 5 years, and caused numerous car fires.

The first all electric car that Nissan produced also had zero battery temperature conditioning, and as such the pack would wear out and have to be replaced after just 60k miles. Nissan has since corrected the problem, but only just barely.

The traditional car manufacturers are bloated and incompetent dinosaurs, and the great recession should have killed half of them were it not for corrupt politicians handing out money like candy to babies.