‘Argonne National Laboratory in the US has essentially cracked the battery technology for electric vehicles’ – so reports an Economic Intelligence Newsletter published by the Telegraph in the UK. The full article appears below.
It appears that the key obstacles to EV adoption can be overcome in the next few years. The development raises the future driving range of standard EVs to a thousand miles or more.
But that’s not all the developments the battery research promises.
The battery developed by the Argonne Laboratory in Chicago, a joint project with the Illinois Institute of Technology, needs no cobalt.
The mining of this rare earth metal causes massive ecological damage in places like the Democratic Republic of Congo, where ‘artisan’ mines scour the landscape.
What’s more, there are battery variants being worked on that don’t even depend on lithium.
Professor Larry Curtiss, the project leader at the Argonne Laboratory in Chicago, said that the current prototype is based on lithium but it doesn’t have to be. The same battery could be developed with sodium.
Now, if we just think about that for a second – it opens up a range of possibilities with sodium deposits more ubiquitous and the possibility of harvesting it from the sea.
As the article states, if these developments can be realised it will ‘sweep away’ fossil fuel transport. Read the full article here.