Energy Storage Requirements

1. Energy & Power

From small hybrid to full electric vehicles, the specific electric properties required and battery
size vary considerably with the vehicle type and size. Pure EV needs the largest amount of
energy in the dedicated volume available in the car with the smallest weight possible (this will
improve the range), whereas the batteries for HEV should provide the maximum power in a
minimum size.

2. Cost
The battery appears as the most expensive component in electric vehicles, and a significant part
of the components cost in hybrids. Therefore, there is a strong pressure to reduce its costs. At
the same time, the requirements of longevity, reliability, and safety are very high, making this
goal difficult to achieve for battery manufacturers.
Depending on the type of vehicle, the price is related to energy (kWh, for EVs) or power
(kW, for HEVs). The battery price is particularly critical for EVs, because the amount of energy
required for achieving a sufficient range, and hence the battery size, is important. New Li
batteries can provide the minimum distance of 150–200 km required for EVs, but their price
represents a hurdle to the commercialization of these vehicles.
The price of high-power batteries used in HEVs is more affordable, because their energy,
and therefore the size, is much smaller. However, the very high-power density requires larger
surface area of thinner electrodes, current collectors, and separator, which increases the
manufacturing cost.
A rough estimate of the composition of the cost of a complete battery system produced at
industrial level in large quantities is 75–85% for the electrochemical cells and 15–25% for the
battery system assembly, and thermal and electrical management. Within the cell, 80–90% is
material cost and 10–20% labour cost. Because the raw materials are the most expensive part
of the price, the cost of the cells constituting the battery system is more or less proportional to
the size.
The second important contribution to the total cost is the battery assembly and management
system that is required to insure the correct monitoring of the multiple cells assembly during
discharge and charge. In turn, this is essential to insure the required reliability and safety of the
system. The use of electronic components and systems already utilized in the car industry
should allow reducing significantly this cost, compared to other battery systems.
In fact, life cycle cost, rather than selling price, is the really significant number to be taken
into account. Therefore, other properties of the battery such as aging on rest and cycling are of
utmost importance on the actual cost over the car life.

3. Battery life
A limited battery life has small consequences for portable equipment but becomes a serious
concern for large battery systems and is a critical requirement for EV large batteries. It has a
direct impact on the life cycle cost [5], and therefore, the battery should not be replaced during
the average lifetime of the car, that is, more than 10 years. Besides the heavy weight and low-
energy density of lead acid batteries, their life has been the biggest drawback that impaired in
the past the development of EVs using these batteries, whose deep discharge cycle life is
limited to several hundreds of cycles only.
3.1 Cycle Life
The number of cycles expected from a battery during its life is of course very dependent on the
usage profile. A full EV requires deep discharge cycling, that is, using the maximum available
energy stored during one charge, whereas a HEV only uses a small part of its energy, being
constantly recharged by the internal combustion engine (ICE). In the first case, the battery is
generally charged overnight for utilization over the next day. Therefore, the number of cycles
required corresponds to more or less one cycle/day of use up to 80% of the stored energy, and
3,500 such cycles would represent about a 10-year life. The total cumulated driving distance
depends on the battery size and energy density determining the car range.
In the case of HEVs, the battery is subjected to thousands of very short cycles per day, using
a very small amount of the total battery energy at ∼50% state of charge (SOC). Because the
energy involved in each cycle (corresponding to each power peak required from the electric
power train) may largely vary, average values have been set to define a cycle life.

3.2 Calendar Life

Calendar life is defined as the battery life on rest, that is, without occurrence of electrochemical
reactions. During rest, batteries are also aging, and both utilization and rest time must be
considered to assess the global lifetime. This is mainly due to interactions between the active
materials in contact with the electrolyte. When charged, a battery includes reactive materials
in both positive and negative electrodes, respectively, oxidizing and reducing agents. The
electrolyte, in contact with both electrodes, is ideally chemically stable, but this is never
completely true, and slow reactions occur with time, this leading to capacity or power loss.

4. Temperature control
Because the temperature is very influent on aging rate, it should be maintained as low as
possible during use, and a temperature management system must be included in the battery.
Maximum operating temperature in usual conditions should preferably be ∼40°C, which can
be achieved either by liquid or air cooling systems, associated to the car heat management
system, or the air conditioning system. In addition, the temperature should be as much as
possible evenly distributed. Indeed, the battery systems are built by association of many single
cells, in parallel or series assembly. Uneven temperature distribution would result in uneven
power distribution and SOC misbalance between cells. In addition, this misbalance may
produce accelerated local cell aging which would impair the life of the complete battery.
The source of heat in a battery comes primarily from its electric resistance, and heat is
produced proportionally to the square of the current drain, either on charge or discharge. In
addition, the aqueous systems of sealed design, that is, lead acid, nickel cadmium, or
nickel/metal hydride, produce some heat at the end of charge, when water of the electrolyte is
involved in the electrochemical reactions. Water recombination occurs, and some of the energy
provided to the battery is converted into heat. This reaction does not occur in the non-aqueous
systems (example: Li, or Li ion batteries), which makes the thermal management easier and
gives them also the advantage of a better energy efficiency.

5. Safety
As a high-energy containing system, a battery represents a danger, just as the fuel tank of
a conventional car. Although the equivalent energy stored in a battery is much smaller, it
is perceived as a greater risk, because electricity is involved and because of the complexity
of the system, inducing more potential failures
The highest hazard considered is the sudden release as heat of the electrical energy stored.
Indeed, battery charging produces oxidizing and reducing compounds at the positive and
negative electrodes, respectively, which might, under certain circumstances, chemically react
together to produce heat. The worst consequences would be a fire or explosion, which is in fact
the battery container bursting due to large and fast release of gases. Triggering of this ultimate
reaction is always a local overheating that leads the chemicals to react together, producing
themselves heat and therefore inducing a thermal runaway. The local overheating might itself
have several causes, such as internal or external short circuit and battery overcharge.
There are various factors that make this possible sketch more or less dramatic or likely to
occur. The main factor is the nature of the chemicals contained in the battery. The new high-
energy systems contain non-aqueous flammable solvents as electrolytes, whereas the
conventional batteries use water which has on the contrary a beneficial effect on heat
propagation. The second factor is the energy density of the battery. The highest the energy
density, the largest the amount of heat to be released out of a given volume, and the highest the
temperature reached and/or amount of gas produced. Third factor is the kinetic of the chemical
degradation reaction, and rate of propagation through the battery, that is, the rate of heat release.
Drastic safety requirements of batteries for EVs or HEVs are set by the car manufacturers,
and passing a bench of severe tests reproducing the use and abuse conditions is a prerequisite
for the qualification. The most frequent abuse conditions explored are external short circuits
that can results from an electrical system failure or crash, internal short circuits resulting from
crash, overvoltage or overcurrent coming from battery system or charger failure, heating from
an outside heat source such as a fire, and strong mechanical stress due to vibrations and shocks.
While a battery should not produce high safety hazard when abused, it must always remain
totally safe during normal utilization, which nevertheless can produce external stress.

6. Recycling and Environmental Issues

As a major component of the electric vehicles, batteries must comply with these regulations,
do not contain hazardous materials, and must be collected and recycled accordingly. In fact,
the collection and recycling are already established for long time in the car industry for lead
acid batteries, mainly because of the toxicity of lead.
Because a battery is composed of many different chemical compounds, recycling process is
not trivial, and many innovative and diverse processes have been developed over the years by
several companies worldwide. The economic and environmental aspects of recycling depend
greatly on the components, their value, toxicity, etc., and this is an important major parameter
in the choice of materials during the R&D phase.