The electric vehicle battery that takes you further is here thanks to novel technologies
Batteries are a ‘booming business’ and offer an enormous economic opportunity for Europe in its race towards zero-emission road transport and becoming a carbon-neutral society. They are constantly evolving to maximise performance at a lower cost. Advanced battery management systems (BMSs) mainly react to ‘symptoms’ as they only have basic knowledge of the battery state and use rules of the thumb to manage it. Due to this approximate and reactive way of working, the safe operating range of the battery must be significantly narrowed down to ensure safe and reliable operation. This leads to inefficient battery use and still does not give a 100 % guarantee to prevent unsafe situations or circumstances damaging to the battery.
Improving electric vehicle battery performance
The EU-funded EVERLASTING(opens in new window) project developed model-based, flexible, modular, cost-effective battery management technologies. This contributed to solving the issues of safety, performance, cost and reliability of electric vehicle battery systems “by developing a ‘next generation’, model-based and proactive BMS,” explains Carlo Mol, EVERLASTING project coordinator. What remains a key technological challenge is coming up with techniques to cost-effectively monitor batteries and manage performance measures while predicting battery ageing and failure. “No single innovation will completely solve these challenges. However, comprehensive solutions that combine data from a multitude of novel sensors with advanced models and efficient thermal and load management techniques can drastically enhance the utilisation and rate capabilities of battery systems within safe limits while extending their lifetime and reliability,” adds Mol. EVERLASTING also aimed to extend the driving range for the same battery size without impacting user comfort. This was done by expanding the battery’s operational envelope (upper and lower limits of the operational range) within the safety limits combined with driveline energy management. The tests achieved very good results increasing driving range by 5.6 %. Project partners also developed a standardised BMS architecture (hardware, software and interfaces) and reliability testing procedures for BMSs to further increase reliability. Mol notes that this information will be publicly accessible so that the entire electric vehicle community could benefit from this pre-standardisation work.
Dissemination and wider impact
The EVERLASTING project results had a significant impact on commercial exploitation, high-quality scientific research, and education. Project partners from industry and research institutes identified 38 technology components. Most of them reached technology readiness level(opens in new window) (TRL) 7-9 with a clear exploitation potential and are already included in the partners’ commercial products and services portfolios. The scientific impact of the project is proven by the high number of publications (37 journal publications, 20 peer-reviewed and 33 non peer-reviewed conference publications) as well as 2 PhD theses, 14 public events and 33 public deliverables (of which 13 are white papers). EVERLASTING participated in the European Commission’s Open Research Data Pilot(opens in new window), and 27 open datasets have been shared via the 4TU.ResearchData repository. “On a broader societal level EVERLASTING results(opens in new window) will contribute to more safe, reliable and performant batteries ultimately resulting in a further uptake of electric mobility,” concludes Mol.
