Researchers in Sweden have developed a new type of battery that could make big waves in the transportation industry, Interesting Engineering reported.
Sinonus, a startup affiliated with Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, is working on an electric vehicle battery made from carbon fiber — a polymer known for being incredibly strong and lightweight. By using carbon fiber for the battery and the structural components of the car, Sinonus said that it could reduce the overall weight of cars and aircrafts by up to 50%.
"The key is to optimize vehicles at system level — based on the weight, strength, stiffness, and electrochemical properties. That is something of a new way of thinking for the automotive sector, which is more used to optimizing individual components," said Leif Asp, a Chalmers University of Technology Professor of Material and Computational Mechanics.
Electric vehicles, which produce no tailpipe pollution, represent a big improvement over traditional gas-powered cars, and they can also help to save consumers money on gas bills.
However, there is still a lot of room for improvement when it comes to EV batteries, which tend to be bulky, heavy, expensive, and reliant on rare earth materials like lithium that must be mined — with big environmental drawbacks.
The super-lightweight carbon fiber batteries could solve many of those problems at once. By reducing a car's weight by half, its range could also be extended, assuaging some consumers' "range anxiety" fears of being stranded between charging stations.
"By substituting part of the structural material in various applications with our multipurpose composite, it is possible to increase electrical storage capacity without adding weight or volume," Sinonus CEO Markus Zetterström explained.
Sinonus has demonstrated its technology's viability by replacing AAA batteries in low-power devices, and it is now focused on scaling it up to the point where it could actually be used in cars and aircrafts.
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