Impossible not to praise the qualities of the electric car when you have tasted the pleasure of using these machines in the city and in everyday life. It is also impossible not to recall the problems inherent in this technology: the price, first of all, with often unfavorable pricing for zero-emission models when compared with fossil fuel vehicles of a similar category, especially when it comes to affordable cars. The mass, too, with increasingly heavy electric novelties which quickly exceed two tons when we look at the side of the family models. Autonomy, finally, directly linked to this mass problem because it is absolutely necessary to install extremely heavy batteries to extend the possible distance between two charges as much as possible.
But if these problems are turning you away from electric cars for the time being, the improvements expected on this technology in the years to come could quickly make you change your mind. In this regard, the spectacular announcements from BMW are really likely to give hope: a few weeks ago, already, the brand’s communicators with the propeller claimed to be working on new cylindrical batteries with much better performance than the cells currently used by the German manufacturer (and most lithium-ion systems on the market). Remember that Tesla has already been using cylindrical batteries of similar dimensions recently, without this allowing for the moment to make significant progress in terms of autonomy.
30% more efficient, 50% less expensive and lighter
According to the German manufacturer, however, these future BMW batteries ” Gen 6 “, expected for 2025, promise on paper a solution to all the current technical problems of electric cars. Thanks to a much better energy density due to a different composition and architecture, these batteries should increase autonomy and charging speed by 30%. The new manufacturing process would also reduce their costs by 50%, a huge figure when you consider that batteries represent around 40% of the total price of an electric vehicle currently on the market.
Thanks to this better energy density, the mass of the batteries will also be able to increase. Add to that a much better ecological balance during their construction (-60% CO2 emissions and reduced use of cobalt or graphite) in addition to better dynamic qualities of the vehicle thanks to the integration of the batteries directly into the structure of the chassis, and you get a much better electric car than the current zero-emission BMWs. Assuming that the other manufacturers achieve similar progress at the same time, there may be enough to reverse the current trend, rather towards the uninterrupted rise in prices of new cars and the higher pricing of electric models. And again, we do not yet know the real potential of future technologies such as that of solid batteriesrather expected for the end of the decade…