Bosch is debuting a new battery technology for electric cars that could be production-ready in as little as five years.
“Bosch is using its knowledge and considerable financial resources to achieve a breakthrough for electromobility,” said Dr. Volkmar Denner, the chairman of the board of management of Robert Bosch GmbH. With the new solid-state cells, Bosch sees the potential to more than double energy density by 2020, and at the same time reduce the costs considerably further. A comparable electric car that has a driving range today of 150 kilometers would be able to travel more than 300 kilometers without recharging – and at a lower cost.
For years, automakers and suppliers have been trying to create more powerful batteries. Cells are an important building block – the battery of an electric car consists of numerous interconnected cells.
The performance of an energy storage device can be improved with various methods. For example, in cell chemistry, the material that the positive and negative poles (cathode and anode) are made of plays a major role. In current lithium-ion batteries, one of the reasons energy capacity is limited is because the anode consists to a large degree of graphite. Using solid-state technology, Bosch can manufacture the anode out of pure lithium, which considerably increases storage capacity. In addition, the new cells function without ionic liquid, which means they are not flammable.
“The pure lithium anode represents a huge innovative leap in battery cell construction,” Denner said.
Bosch