2 Chapter 1 will take a look at some of the testing and certification requirements, the growing group of industry organizations and discuss some of the various applications that are benefitting from the addition of electrical energy storage technology. With the recent exposure that has occurred in the media surrounding Li-ion batteries, such as the Boeing 787 Dreamliner battery failures that caused the delay in launching the new plane and an intensive investigation and several battery failures in both Tesla and Chevrolet’s electric vehicles (Klayman, 2013; Lowy, 2011; Santos, 2013), the focus on Li-ion battery design as a system has become much more important.
The perspective that I have taken for some time now is that it is not the cell that makes the system safe, in fact it is exactly the opposite it is the system that makes the battery cells safe. What I mean by this is that you can take the highest quality and best performing Li-ion battery in the world and put it into a poorly designed pack and it will fail, it could suffer from reduced life, low power, and ultimately safety issues. Conversely, you can take a relatively poorly designed or manufactured cell and make it operate relatively safely with a good energy storage System design.
Li-ion energy storage system design requires taking a systems level approach—there is no magic chemistry available that will make a pack safe. Factors Influencing Consumer Adoption of Electric Vehicles Another question that we should ask as we begin our discussion on Li-ion batteries is, what are the factors that will drive consumer adoption of Li-ion battery powered vehicles? There are effectively five factors that need continuous attention by all of the major stakeholders in order to ensure the successful growth of battery powered vehicles and energy storage systems. These factors include: 1.
Cost—great progress has already been made in reducing battery costs, but there is still much work to be done to make Li-ion-based battery solutions affordable enough to enable high-volume applications. And when it comes to stationary energy storage sys- tems, there are many competing technologies, making it even more important for the costs of Li-ion to continue to drop. 2. Availability—there are more new electrified vehicle applications available to the con- sumer every year, but when we look at the more highly electrified plug-in hybrid electric vehicle and electric vehicles, there are still a relatively limited amount of products available to the consumer. 3.
Range anxiety—even with more electrified versions of current vehicles available, there is still an area of customer concern around the electric range that the vehicles can achieve. 4. Education—perhaps one of the areas that neither the industry nor the governments have done a very good job around is in educating the consumer on the differences, similarities, benefits, and challenges of electrified vehicles. Consumers still consider any level of electrification to be “high technology” rather than mass market ready. But in all reality, the “conventional” vehicle is already almost entirely electrified outside of the powertrain.