Toronto, Ontario — As noted in a recent study from scientists working in the SLAC-Standford Battery Center, electric vehicles subject to normal use may actually last a third longer than initially predicted.
In a joint project between Stanford University’s Precourt Institute for Energy and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, the study aimed to demonstrate that owners of a typical electric vehicle may not need to replace the battery pack or buy a new car for several additional years.
According to a report originally published by AutoTech, Simona Onori, senior author and an associate professor of energy science and engineering in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, commented that “we’ve not been testing EV batteries the right way. To our surprise, real driving with frequent acceleration, braking that charges the batteries a bit, stopping to pop into a store and letting the batteries rest for hours at a time, helps batteries last longer than we had thought based on industry standard lab tests.”
In order to test the capabilities of the technology, researchers involved in the project designed four types of EV discharge profiles, including standard constant discharge to dynamic discharging based on real driving data.
From here, the team tested 92 commercial lithium ion batteries for more than two years across the discharge profiles.
Ultimately, after correlating the data, researchers found that the profiles that most closely reflected actual driving behaviours, the higher the EV life expectancy predicted.
Notably, the study showed a connection between sharp, short EV accelerations and slower degradation. Similarly, pressing the pedal hard in an EV also does not speed up the aging process.
In looking ahead, energy science and engineering postdoctoral scholar Le Xu further told AutoTech that “going forward, evaluating new battery chemistries and designs with realistic demand profiles will be really important. Researchers can now revisit presumed aging mechanisms at the chemistry, materials and cell levels to deepen their understanding. This will facilitate the development of advanced control algorithms that optimize the use of existing commercial battery architectures.”
