20 year non-degradable lithium metal battery
Latham: Batteries for electric vehicles will soon be introduced that can be charged in three minutes and will not degrade for 20 years.
Eden Energy, a start-up company based in Waltham, Massachusetts, has been granted a license and $5.15 million in funding to manufacture large-scale batteries for installation in electric vehicles.
This battery, created by scientists at Harvard University, is made of lithium metal instead of lithium ion.
The complex design of the battery is inspired by a sandwich that protects the negative electrode of the battery from the microstructure that forms on it. This structure occurs in lithium metal batteries and causes them to fail quickly.
Currently, electric vehicles are fitted with lithium-ion batteries that degrade over time and have a lifespan of seven to eight years. Their lifespan depends on how they are used, just like a smartphone battery.
Lithium-ion batteries can be replaced but can be quite expensive, meaning drivers are better off buying a new electric vehicle.
But this new solid-state lithium-metal battery will extend the life of electric vehicles by about 20 years, as long as petrol and diesel-powered vehicles, and won’t need to be replaced during that time.
A sample of this battery was fully charged in three minutes in the laboratory, while it can be charged more than 10,000 times in its lifetime.
This new battery technology was created by Shin Li and his colleagues from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science.
