Li-Ion battery runs for 180K and keeps on going

Here’s some exciting news for the EV faithful: Tests results show that the lithium ion batteries destined for cars last a long time. These are not the sickly, unreliable laptop batteries that are constantly forcing us to search for outlets. These are workhorses.

I refer to recent tests conducted by Southern California Edison (SCE) on a battery made by Johnson Controls-Saft. They installed the battery into a light van and simulated the kind of regular use such a vehicle would typically undergo. They did this for two years.

180,000 miles later, the battery is showing only minimal signs of slowing down.

The DOE is excited, and is funding SCE with the hopes that they will repeat the trick with a battery suitable for a regular-sized passenger vehicle.

It is hard to overstate how much the game would change if batteries with performance like this became the norm. Batteries will also need to improve in terms of how far they can drive the car on a single charge, but it is arguably more important that the battery stays robust over the course of its lifetime.

Via Autobloggreen