Lithium batteries,
the way forward for hybrid cars
The thing that makes a car a hybrid car is
its use of dual technology
At the moment almost all hybrid cars use a combination of a gas or diesel engine and an electric motor. The energy for most of these motors is
generated from the hybrid cars engine
and stored in the batteries
There is however a slight difficulty with this system: the battery. The batteries that are commonly used in hybrid cars are still very similar to the standard car batteries that have been in use for great many years.
While these batteries were adequate to power the normal requirements of your average car, such as starter motor, lights, air conditioning, etc. They are not powerful enough to drive the electric motor of the new hybrid cars. The new hybrid cars that are actually driven in part by their electric motors need a far greater source of energy. Traditional batteries are simply not powerful enough.
This shortfall has, in the past, been made up by simply using larger amounts of batteries to increase the power available in hybrid cars. However this solution has, although practical in the short term, provided its own set of problems. The power needed to drive the hybrid cars electric motor meant that a large number of batteries were needed and this meant increased weight and cost.
The extra weight of these meant more load had to be pulled by the cars motor (whether gas or electric) and this led to increased fuel consumption, either to drive the engine or to provide electricity for the motor. This of course, in part at least, defeated the object of using the electric motor, which was to cut fuel costs. Also large amounts of batteries are expensive to buy and, given the limited longevity of most batteries, to replace, which all adds to both the initial cost and the maintenance of the vehicle.
The main hope for improving this situation for hybrid cars lies with lithium batteries. These are the same batteries that are currently used to power laptops and cameras. They provide a much more concentrated and therefore smaller way of storing energy as electricity. If developed to their full potential they could provide a long term solution to the problem of providing sufficient electric power to make hybrid cars a more practical solution to low cost, low emission motoring.
The problem with lithium batteries is making them big enough so that they can store enough energy to power hybrid cars without having to revert to the gas engine when driving in town. Lithium batteries are very efficient when manufactured to a certain capacity but if this is increased they are subject to a condition called thermal run off. This can cause larger batteries to overheat and in some instances they can actually catch fire.
The main problem is the cobalt, a metal used in the manufacture of lithium batteries. Many manufactures have been working on a solution to this problem. Subaru, Nissan, Mitsubishi and Toyota, probably the leading manufactured of hybrid cars, are all working on solutions to this. The most promising solution seems to be replacing the cobalt with phosphate this produces a much safer and more reliable battery. There is some power loss as opposed to the cobalt but the batteries should still be a long way ahead of conventional batteries used in hybrid cars.
With these advances in battery technology the hybrid cars of the future seem set to be even more efficient with greater power storage available at a lower cost. And with more reliable and smaller batteries being used, costs both in the way of retail prices and running costs look set to decrease, the saving in both fuel and emissions that have always been the goal of hybrid cars manufacturers, appear to be improving.
Larry Westfall is the owner of www.Asian-Daily.com
