What are the types of electric vehicle batteries

Electric vehicles are energy-saving, environmentally friendly, and pollution-free, and will become an inevitable trend in the development of automobiles in the future. For electric vehicles, batteries are their main source of power, and there are many types of batteries available. Let's take a look together.
Classification of electric vehicle batteries
Electric vehicle batteries can be divided into two categories, namely batteries and fuel cells. Batteries are suitable for pure electric vehicles and can be classified into lead-acid batteries, nickel based batteries (nickel hydrogen batteries, nickel metal hydride batteries, nickel cadmium batteries, nickel zinc batteries), sodium sulfur batteries, sodium nickel chloride batteries, secondary lithium batteries, air batteries, and other types. Fuel cells are specialized for fuel cell electric vehicles and can be divided into alkaline fuel cells (AFC), phosphoric acid fuel cells (PAFC), molten carbonate fuel cells (MCFC), solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC), proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC), direct methanol fuel cells (DMFC), and other types.
1. Lead acid battery
Lead acid batteries have a history of more than 100 years and are widely used as starting power sources for internal combustion engine vehicles. They are also mature batteries for electric vehicles, with good reliability, easy availability of raw materials, low price, and a specific power that can basically meet the power requirements of electric vehicles. However, they have two major disadvantages: low specific energy, large mass and volume, and short driving range on a single charge. The other is short service life and high operating costs.
2. Nickel hydrogen battery
Nickel hydrogen batteries belong to alkaline batteries, which have a long cycle life and no memory effect, but are relatively expensive. The foreign companies that produce nickel batteries for electric vehicles are mainly a joint venture between Ovonie, Toyota, and Panasonic. Ovonie currently has two types of unit batteries, 80A · h and 100A · h, with a specific energy of 75-80W · h/kg and a cycle life of over 600 times. This type of battery has been tested on several electric vehicles, and one type of vehicle can travel 345km on a single charge. One vehicle has traveled more than 80000 kilometers in a year. Due to its high price, it has not yet been mass-produced. In China, 55A · h and 100A · h unit batteries have been developed, with a specific energy of 65 W · h/h. Nickel batteries with a power density greater than 800W/kg.
3. Lithium ion battery
As a new type of rechargeable battery with high voltage and energy density, lithium-ion secondary batteries for electric vehicles have unique physical and electrochemical properties, which have broad prospects for civilian and defense applications. Their outstanding features are light weight, large energy storage, no pollution, no memory effect, and long service life. Under the same volume and weight conditions, the storage capacity of lithium batteries is 1.6 times that of nickel hydrogen batteries and 4 times that of nickel cadmium batteries. Moreover, humans have only developed and utilized 20% to 30% of their theoretical capacity, which has a very promising development prospect. At the same time, it is a truly green and environmentally friendly battery that will not cause pollution to the environment. It is currently the best battery that can be applied to electric vehicles. China has been developing and utilizing lithium-ion batteries since the 1990s, and has made breakthrough progress by developing lithium-ion batteries with completely independent intellectual property rights.
4. Sodium sulfur battery
Sodium sulfur batteries have a high specific energy, with a theoretical specific energy of 760W · h/kg, which is actually greater than 100W · h/kg, 3-4 times that of lead-acid batteries. In addition, they can discharge with high current and high power, and their discharge current density can generally reach 200-300mA/mm2, and they can release three times their inherent energy in an instant. Another advantage is their high charge and discharge efficiency. Due to the use of solid electrolytes, they do not have the self discharge and side reactions commonly found in liquid electrolyte secondary batteries, and their charge and discharge current efficiency is almost 100%. The disadvantages of sodium sulfur batteries are mainly that their working temperature is between 300-350 ℃, so they require certain heating and insulation during operation. However, high temperature corrosion is severe and the battery life is short. High performance vacuum insulation technology has been adopted to effectively solve this problem, but there are also issues such as poor performance stability and safety in use.
5. Nickel cadmium battery
The application of nickel cadmium batteries is second only to lead-acid batteries, with a specific energy of 55W · h/kg and a specific power of over 190W/kg. They can be quickly charged and have a longer cycle life, more than twice that of lead-acid batteries, reaching over 2000 cycles. However, their price is 4-5 times that of lead-acid batteries. Although their initial purchase cost is high, their long-term actual usage cost is not high due to their advantages in energy and service life. Its disadvantage is that it has a "memory effect", which can easily lead to a decrease in the available capacity of the battery due to poor charging and discharging. After about ten uses, a complete charge and discharge should be performed. If there is already a "memory effect", it should be continuously charged and discharged 3-5 times to release the memory. In addition, cadmium is toxic, so attention should be paid to recycling during use to avoid environmental pollution caused by cadmium.

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