Periodic Reporting for period 1 - AVILOO bcheck (Independent test of the battery health in electric vehicles)
Reporting period: 2020-10-01 to 2021-06-30
Electric cars are a major factor in the strategy to tackle the environmental challenges that we face today.
Therefore, more and more electric cars are available, and consequently the number of electric cars meant to be sold as used vehicles increases continuously.
The battery is the most important and most expensive part of an electric vehicle, and its importance increases especially on the used-cars market. The initial capacity of a battery decreases permanently during its usage. Furthermore, its inner resistance continues to increase.
These factors are two of the main benchmarks of a batteries “State of Health”. In order to make a proper purchase decision on buying a used electric car, one must know the State of Health of the electric car’s battery.
Determining the State of Health of a used battery is a non-trivial task as it is very time consuming. In order to accurately estimate the State of Health of a battery, usually a full discharge is needed. Furthermore, environmental influences (such as temperature) and technical capabilities of the car (e.g. discharge rate) need to be taken into consideration.
The State of Health that you can get from the car dealer is often not accurate and not reliable. Depending on the vehicle model, the determination can take long, and it may be expensive.
With the availability of AVILOO’s accurate and user-friendly battery test, which will take less than 30 minutes, people will be able to enter the electric-vehicle market without the fear of losing money by buying an electric vehicle with a worn-out battery.
To summarize, the project’s overall objective is to make a battery test available that can be used easily and cheap in order to determine the State of Health of the battery of an electric vehicle.
Therefore, more and more electric cars are available, and consequently the number of electric cars meant to be sold as used vehicles increases continuously.
The battery is the most important and most expensive part of an electric vehicle, and its importance increases especially on the used-cars market. The initial capacity of a battery decreases permanently during its usage. Furthermore, its inner resistance continues to increase.
These factors are two of the main benchmarks of a batteries “State of Health”. In order to make a proper purchase decision on buying a used electric car, one must know the State of Health of the electric car’s battery.
Determining the State of Health of a used battery is a non-trivial task as it is very time consuming. In order to accurately estimate the State of Health of a battery, usually a full discharge is needed. Furthermore, environmental influences (such as temperature) and technical capabilities of the car (e.g. discharge rate) need to be taken into consideration.
The State of Health that you can get from the car dealer is often not accurate and not reliable. Depending on the vehicle model, the determination can take long, and it may be expensive.
With the availability of AVILOO’s accurate and user-friendly battery test, which will take less than 30 minutes, people will be able to enter the electric-vehicle market without the fear of losing money by buying an electric vehicle with a worn-out battery.
To summarize, the project’s overall objective is to make a battery test available that can be used easily and cheap in order to determine the State of Health of the battery of an electric vehicle.
During the first reporting period several improvements to both hard- and software were carried out.
A lot of effort was especially put into developing a Cell Test Bench to obtain mathematical models of different battery cells that are used in common electric vehicles. These models are used for the State-of-Health determination of electric cars’ batteries under varying environmental influences.
In order to make the battery test more user-friendly a test app was created and integrated into the AVILOO Battery Data Platform. The app guides the potential customer through the battery test step by step.
Other actions carried out so far within the project focused on reducing the test duration required for accurately determining the State of Health.
A lot of effort was especially put into developing a Cell Test Bench to obtain mathematical models of different battery cells that are used in common electric vehicles. These models are used for the State-of-Health determination of electric cars’ batteries under varying environmental influences.
In order to make the battery test more user-friendly a test app was created and integrated into the AVILOO Battery Data Platform. The app guides the potential customer through the battery test step by step.
Other actions carried out so far within the project focused on reducing the test duration required for accurately determining the State of Health.
The expected result at the end of the project is to provide a battery test that can be carried out in less than 30 minutes and that can give the customer an accurate indication of the State of Health of his/her battery.