Car body becomes battery: future electric cars will get rid of the problem of large batteries

Volvo Cars is currently involved in a research project that aims to integrate batteries into car panels . This will not only mean that in the future, energy can be stored in the tight space of car panels, eliminating the need for large and bulky batteries in electric vehicles; it will also open up many new applications.

Nine European companies and institutions are developing a composite material combining carbon fiber and polymer resin that can be charged faster and store more energy than conventional batteries, according to a materials development project recently published by London Imperial College. Volvo Cars is the only automaker involved in the project, which is partly funded by the European Union.

The composite material developed will provide extremely strong and flexible characteristics. Therefore, it can be molded into shapes that can be used to create car body panels; at the same time, it is much lighter than today's car batteries. According to Volvo Cars, if this new composite material can be used to replace the current steel car body, the weight of a car can be reduced by another 15%.

According to researchers at Imperial College London, with this new material, the power needed to start a car in the future will come from the roof, hood and even doors, and even navigation equipment can be operated by this power source; electric cars or hybrid cars will no longer have to carry a bulky large car battery.

The project will last four years. In the first phase of development, the focus will be on further developing the composite material so that it can store more energy, expanding the material's surface area by adding carbon nanotubes to the carbon fiber surface, improving its mechanical properties, and studying ways to produce the material on an industrial scale.

Until the final stage, the battery developed using this composite material can be installed in the body panels of the car, and this goal is currently being tested. The researchers initially installed the composite battery in the metal groove of the wheel well where the spare wheel of the car is usually stored. "This is a relatively large structure that can be easily replaced. Although the power is not yet large enough to start the whole car, it is more than enough to stop or restart the engine when the car stops at red lights or other situations," explained Per-Ivar Sellergren, development engineer at Volvo Cars Material Centre.

If this plan is successful, in addition to the automotive field, the composite material can also be used to generate many possible new applications. For example, the researchers gave an example that mobile phones can be made smaller and even as thin as credit cards; laptops can also be powered by their shell panels and can operate longer on a single charge.

New nanomaterials are used to create lighter body panels that can replace the current bulky large vehicle batteries and achieve fast storage and charging.