Autonomy, charging time: what do the batteries of the future promise us?

While France is inaugurating its first gigafactory, in Pas-de-Calais, the new generation of batteries is awaited by motorists, who are still skeptical about the advent of the electric car: indeed, this technology still raises too many questions and distrust to win all the votes.

Fortunately, technologies are progressing at breakneck speed. batteries du futur should help remove the obstacles to buying an electric car: price, range and charging time. And even if the first prototypes see the light of day, it will still be necessary to be patient before enjoying an electric car without the constraints that it implies today.

Batteries of the future: a recharging time divided by 4

Today’s battery technologies, NMC (nickel-manganese-cobalt) and LFP (lithium-iron-phosphate), will soon be supplemented by batteries au sodium without lithium, which promise to be less expensive and promise a faster recharging time: in a few years, it will take 4 times less time to recharge your electric car!

These batteries of the future should quickly become more popular, because manufacturers and manufacturers want to accelerate their marketing, to reassure the undecided. Manufacturers will also offer several ranges of batteriesbased on different chemistries, to play on prices: for example, at Stellantis, at the end of the year, the restyled electric Opel Corsa will leave the choice between two battery technologies, while the future Citroën C3 Aircross could offer the choice between LFP at the entry level and NMC at the top of the range.

At the rate research seems to be going, current batteries could be quickly outdated. So, 1,000 km of autonomy thanks to technology LMFP (lithium-manganese-iron-phosphate)? An energy density multiplied by two thanks to solid-state batteries? Unless the advent of lithium-free batteries does indeed come from sodium… It’s still too early to tell.

The battery, the sinews of war for the electric car

Manufacturers will also be able to play on other parameters to improve their electric cars, such as electric motors or the inverter: for improve performancesome manufacturers such as the Hyundai-Kia group use silicone carbide (or silicon carbide), a material “which lets the current flow smoothly, but which is also able to be insulating when necessary”says David Labrosse, Product Planning Manager at Hyundai Group’s European Technical Center.

One of the other challenges of the batteries of the future is also to preserve natural resources while improving their performance. Manufacturers then rely on recycling, and reduce their use of rare and expensive materials. But even if research is advancing rapidly, we should not delude ourselves: between now and 2030, the extraction of natural resources will continue to increase. Until reaching, we are told, a plateau…

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