Electric cars are here to stay and motorists are having to become armchair experts in battery technology. It's no easy task: drivers need to revise electrical engineering and chemistry lessons to fully understand the cells in electric vehicles (EVs).....
In this guide, we explain how electric car batteries work for a layperson, what to look out for if you're thinking of buying an EV and how to distinguish between good battery tech and something which might soon feel like Betamax.
What kind of batteries do electric cars use?
Most EVs on sale today use fundamentally similar battery tech: hundreds of individual battery cells packaged into modules or pockets, which assembled together make up the electric car battery. They're huge affairs, typically stretching several meters in length - and, as such, they are housed along the chassis of a car below your feet, often in a skateboard configuration.
Former Tesla and now Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson explains: ‘It’s important to differentiate. The small, individual elements are the cells – the finished unit is the battery.’ They're bundled together into a battery unit, which is conditioned to maintain an optimum operating temperature regardless of the summer or winter climate outside, as shown in our diagram below.There are two main types of electric car battery commonly used today:
- Lithium ion battery Used by most EV makers (eg Tesla, Jaguar)
- Nickel-metal hydride Seen in hybrids (eg Toyota)
The underlying chemistry isn't that different to the batteries in your mobile. Most modern smartphones use lithium-ion batteries for quick charge cycling - this is what you'd find in an iPhone or Samsung Galaxy mobile, just deployed on a giant scale.
Requirements are complex: they need to be able to store a lot of energy, but also recharge quickly, and retain their energy density over many thousands of charging cycles, all the while being pummeled by roads, potholes and whatever the great British weather throws at them...
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