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

so.. they 'invented' this?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

next you're gonna tell me they got a cooler for batteries for use in hot climates.....

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.

Re:This is News?

[Fly Swatter]

No, sounds more like an integral heating coil that gets the charging current until proper temp is reached, at which point the current is switched to the battery itself. Simple and elegant as it can be all built into the battery, if you are into that sort of thing.

Tesla batteries last longer than that.

[godel_56]

A group of Tesla owners on the Dutch-Belgium Tesla Forum are gathering data from over 350 Tesla vehicles across the world and frequently updating it in a public Google file. We have previously reported on the data, but they have since added many more vehicles and those vehicles have been driving a lot more – completing more battery cycles. The data clearly shows that for the first 50,000 miles (100,000 km), most Tesla battery packs will lose about 5% of their capacity, but after the 50,000-mile mark, the capacity levels off and it looks like it could be difficult to make a pack degrade by another 5%.

https://electrek.co/2018/04/14/tesla-battery-degradation-data/

The trend line currently suggests that the average battery pack could cycle through over 300,000 km (186,000) before coming close to 90% capacity.

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:Lies!

[crow]

EVs work fine in the cold, but it does reduce their range. A friend of mine used the same cells that Tesla uses to power a light for his dog sled in the Iditarod, and it worked flawlessly at 40 below.

Some cars do worse in the winter than others. My Tesla may lose a third of its range in extreme cold while my Leaf loses more than half. Whether this makes a particular EV impractical for you depends on the car and your needs.

Sure it's useful in Florida

[Ungrounded Lightning]

I take issue with your "Not useful in Florida" title.

Sure, in Florida (at normal temperatures) the battery/controller would go straight to charging (and the normal cooling fans or whatever would kick in once it got hot enough). So it would work just fine, though it wouldn't use the "heat me up first" feature.

Until some winter when you drive up to Michigan, Quebeck, Alaska, or the nearest ski mountain or place where your kids can make snowballs, park it overnight at a motel or resort (because all the charging stations are full), then charge it in the morning while you eat breakfast. Oops! THEN you'll want the feature to be installed.

(It's really low weight, so hauling around a extra power transistor and some nickel foil heating elements doesn't cut into your mileage.)

So even if you don't actually use it in Florida it's still useful there - to the dealer selling you the car. B-)