According to information from Le Parisien, the aircraft manufacturer and the car manufacturer have signed an agreement to develop a solid battery for electric cars and future hybrid aircraft.
Renault and Airbus have signed a research and development agreement to design a solid-state battery for electric cars and future hybrid aircraft, reports Le Parisien Tuesday on its website. “Renault will bring us its experience in electrification and batteries,” Sabine Klauke, director of engineering at Airbus, told the daily. “We are not direct competitors, this allows us to move forward together,” adds his counterpart at Renault Group, Gilles Le Borgne.
Doing without “sarcophagi”
Le Parisien specifies that the aircraft manufacturer and the car manufacturer will share their knowledge on electrification and have their engineers work together to build a solid battery, supposed to save costs and weight, while having a higher capacity. . “The current problem is that the electrolyte, which makes the connection between the minus pole and the plus pole, is liquid, explains the Renault Group representative. This leads to a risk of combustion which forces us to put in place effective countermeasures and safe but expensive.
In order to limit this risk in the event of an accident and impact, Renault therefore builds “sarcophagi” around the batteries, but these can weigh up to 20% of the cost of the battery. “If we remove it, the price of an electric car could eventually drop for the individual, and it could gain autonomy,” says Gilles Le Borgne. On the Airbus side, the removal of this sarcophagus would make it possible “to use the electricity from the batteries for something other than the cockpit and the cabins during the flight” according to Sabine Klauke.
A Paris-Marseille without recharging or a 100% electric take-off
The “new generation battery” will be able to deliver more than 1,000 watts/liter against about 700 currently, a gain of 30 to 40% in energy capacity. “The idea would be to design vehicles capable of crossing France, from Paris to Marseille, without needing to recharge”, underlines Gilles Le Borgne.
“We can then consider carrying out a 100% electric take-off and recharging the batteries during the flight”, specifies Sabine Klauke.
Renault and Airbus hope to achieve an operational product by 2030-2035, but no industrial partnership for the possible production of these new generation batteries has yet been decided, writes Le Parisien.
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