Deep Focus | How can the future of electric vehicles be sustainable?

With the development of the new energy vehicle industry, more and more families are choosing electric vehicles for travel based on the concepts of environmental protection and cost saving. Whenever we talk about the future development trend of the automobile industry, the topic of "low carbon and environmental protection" is still the focus.

At present, many car companies have regarded sustainable development as an important strategic fulcrum, and its main purpose is to reduce resource consumption and waste emissions. This not only helps save social resources, but also reduces business costs and environmental treatment costs. It is a combination of economic, social and environmental benefits, and its importance is self-evident.

Today, more and more funds and new technologies are gradually entering the electric vehicle manufacturing industry, continuously contributing to the "healthy" development of the industry. However, in a short period of time, whether electric vehicles are the real solution to environmental protection still arouses concern.

It can be said that cars are a mobile source of pollution. As the number of cars increases and their use becomes more widespread, their negative effects on the environment are also increasing. Car exhaust contains hundreds of different compounds. The main pollutants are hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, lead compounds, benzopyrene and solid particulate matter. According to research, a car emits harmful exhaust gases three times its own weight in a year.

As you can see from the chart below, the transportation industry is a major contributor to Earth’s greenhouse gas emissions. Nearly half of global carbon dioxide ( CO ₂ ) emissions come from road transport.

The exhaust emissions produced by traditional internal combustion engine vehicles during operation contain a large number of environmentally unfriendly chemicals, including:

• Carbon dioxide ( CO2 ₎

• _Nitrogen oxides ( NOx )

• Particulate matter (PM10)

• Ozone ( O3 ₎

Since Europe promulgated its first passenger car exhaust emission standards in 1970, various countries and institutions have launched many measures to limit exhaust emissions. In 1992, the European No. 1 standard was introduced, requiring gasoline vehicles to install catalytic converters to reduce carbon monoxide emissions. Until now, we have adopted the Euro 6 standard (China adopts the National 6 standard) to ensure that pollutant emissions are reduced by 96% compared to 1992. about.

Fortunately, with the advancement of technology, the advantages of electric vehicles in terms of energy conservation and environmental protection have become increasingly prominent.

According to research statistics, from the perspective of the entire life cycle of passenger cars, the use of electric vehicles can reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by approximately 37%, of which operational emissions are reduced by 75%. As can be seen from the figure below, compared with vehicles driven by internal combustion engines, except for the two links of body production and battery production, the greenhouse gas emissions of electric vehicles are greatly reduced in other links.

Currently, with the rapid development of battery technology and many innovative breakthroughs and applications on the horizon, it will become easier for people to own and use zero-emission electric vehicles. Imagine that in the near future, the battery pack can provide a range of more than 500 kilometers or even more in just a few minutes of charging, thus making the " range anxiety " and " long charging time " that hinder the development of electric vehicles very serious. Be a thing of the past soon.

Let’s take a look at some of the exciting research and advances on the frontier of battery technology.

Europe's Chalmers University of Technology has been focusing on new research that aims to use new automotive structural components as building blocks of future batteries, which will undoubtedly significantly reduce the overall weight of the vehicle. , making it lighter and more energy efficient. This new battery material uses carbon fiber as the negative electrode and the positive electrode is lithium iron phosphate. It is a good choice for electric vehicles to use these very hard parts as the body structure.

The US-based company NAWA Technologies is developing and industrializing a unique electrode material that combines the best of nano and green technologies: ultra-fast carbon batteries. This technology will change the definition of batteries as we know them, using vertically aligned carbon nanotubes to enable batteries that are 10 times more powerful than current battery packs. It can also triple energy storage efficiency and extend battery life by five times. It is said that this battery, which is about to be mass-produced, can be charged to 80% capacity in 5 minutes.

The University of Texas in the United States is working on a lithium-ion battery that does not use cobalt as a cathode, using up to 89% nickel along with aluminum and manganese. Cobalt is a rare and expensive metal that is harmful to the environment both to mine and to manufacture. The domestic Honeycomb Energy SVOLT company is manufacturing cobalt-free batteries for the electric vehicle market. They aim to provide batteries with higher energy density so that the vehicle's single-charge endurance can reach about 800 kilometers.

In an effort to find a cure for unstable silicon in lithium-ion batteries, researchers at the University of Eastern Finland have developed a method to produce a hybrid anode that uses mesoporous silicon microparticles and carbon nanotubes. The hope is to replace graphite as the anode and replace it with silicon with 10 times the capacity, which will greatly improve battery performance. The most important thing is that this silicon is derived from barley husk ash, which is environmentally friendly and does not cause pollution.

IBM research has discovered a new battery chemistry that contains no heavy metals and can exceed the performance of lithium-ion batteries. Even more optimistic is that these materials are extracted from seawater. This battery not only charges faster, but also They are cheaper to manufacture and can store higher amounts of energy. Researchers at UC Riverside are working on battery technology that uses sand to create pure silicon to achieve performance three times better than current graphite-based lithium-ion batteries. This new pure silicon material could also provide longer battery life.

Solid-state batteries, as the name suggests, refer to batteries made from tightly compressed hard materials, rather than the slightly sticky, wet materials that make up typical lithium batteries. Recently, scientists at companies including Toyota and Solid Power are innovating a solid-state battery that uses sulfide superionic conductors for better battery performance. The battery reportedly operates at supercapacitor levels and can be fully charged in just 7 minutes. In addition, solid-state batteries provide excellent thermal stability and are safer to use than current lithium batteries.

Researchers at the University of Sydney have discovered a way to create zinc-air batteries that cost far less than current batteries. Zinc-air batteries have superior performance and are safer than lithium-ion batteries. Currently, the challenge in zinc-air battery development is cost, but scientists have found a way to use cheaper alternatives. As a result, cheaper and safer batteries may soon appear on the market.