One of the problems that is often raised in the discussion of electric cars is that their batteries are very expensive, and that their capacity deteriorates the more they are used and the older they get.
This means that the range of a used electric car is not as good as when it was new, but also that the owner of an older electric car risks a very expensive repair.
However, a discovery made with the help of AI seems to be able to change that situation.
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50 percent longer service life
It is researchers at Stanford University in California, USA, who have discovered a method that can extend the life of the battery in an electric car by 50 percent, according to an article in New Scientist.
The discovery, which was made by a group of scientists led by William Chuehmeans that a battery can handle significantly more charge cycles before it is used up.
How you charge your electric car can affect battery life – Photo: Jeff Gritchen/TTWorks on today’s batteries
What is really significant about the discovery is that the researchers have not made any real changes in the way the battery is structured, compared to the lithium-ion batteries that are already in modern electric cars.
This also means that the method should be relatively easy to adopt in the electric cars that are built today.
– The cool thing is that we didn’t change any chemistry in the battery, William Chueh explains to New Scientist.
– We only changed the last step in manufacturing to shape the battery a little differently, he continues.
Discovery using AI
Another interesting detail is that the discovery was made with the help of AI.
The researchers used machine learning to find the most important factors that affect the battery’s performance during the first charge after manufacturing.
It turned out that the most important thing was to charge the battery with really high voltage the first time.
This is the opposite of what is normal in the car industry today, where instead the batteries are charged with low voltage over a long period of time.
The researchers claim that a battery that is charged for the first time at a high voltage will not only wear more slowly, but will also charge and discharge more efficiently.
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