Stanford researchers have found that EV battery makers have been making a fundamental mistake at the outset.
Some game-changing news about the state of EV battery technology slipped into the news a couple of weeks ago, almost unnoticed. Probably lost amongst the enthusiasm for the forthcoming long Labor Day weekend or a fresh serving of weirdness from the campaign of former President Donald J. Trump.
Nevertheless, whether anybody noticed it or not, the good news is that a big EV battery makeover is beginning to take shape, reports the observant team at CleanTechnica.
The EV battery news comes from a research team based at the SLAC-Stanford Battery Center at Stanford University in California, headed up by Professor Will Chueh. The project was a collaborative effort in partnership with the Toyota Research Institute MIT, and the University of Washington.
The team took aim at the common wisdom for battery manufacturing, which says that factories should hold a newly made lithium-ion battery for an initial charge lasting 10 hours at low current before setting it loose.
The 10-hour initial charge is costly and time-consuming, but the purpose is - or was - to reduce the loss of lithium up front, thereby increasing the lifespan of the battery.
Not so, the researchers discovered. They flipped the script and purposefully charged the batteries on a high current for just 20 minutes. They lost quite a bit of lithium at the outset, but they gained an average improvement of 50 percent in EV battery lifespan. Hey presto!
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