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Lithium Ion Battery? The Lightest Most Powerful Batteries Out There...Lithium Ion Battery? Are They Used In Electric Cars? YES Watch The Tesla Model S Battery Swap Technology
Bob Lutz, Ex CEO of GM On Lithium Batteries
It was 1912 when the first lithium packs were made. Lithium provides a chemical advantage over other chemistries because of it's high power for weight due to the fact that it is highly reactive, and is the lightest of all metals. It is the lightest metal in the periodic table. The first attempts to make lithium batteries were not successful because the lithium metal material was unstable during charging. So designers shifted to Lithium ion battery designs which proved to be safer than Lithium metal designs when charging and discharging the battery. It is also much better at storing charge than other kinds of batteries, like Nickel Cadmium... Also it has a major advantage in that 1 cell provides 3.6 volts, which is enough to power many small devices like cell phones and so on. Lithium batteries are low maintenance, which makes it unique among battery types. The battery does not exhibit a memory effect like nickel cadmium, are non toxic, and have little self discharge.. However the cell still needs internal protection and they can be fragile. In electric cars, the number of individual pieces of battery may number in the thousands so that there is a concern that the pack should remain chargeable to its full capacity in terms of aging of the cells. The problem is most manufacturers are tight lipped about this problem, for as we know, battery packs remain a weak link in most electronic gear, failing too often to be reliable for many years... But the manufacturers are building many hundreds of cars and if in mass production, thousands of cars that all need battery packs that are as reliable as gasoline as a source of power for transportation... We will see innovations in the various battery chemistries continue at a fast rate because of technological imperatives and large government incentives...
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