Electrolyte promises battery operation in freezing and searing temperatures

Developed by engineers at the University of California San Diego, the temperature-resilient batteries are described in a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Such batteries could allow electric vehicles in cold climates to travel farther on a single charge; they could also reduce the need for cooling systems to keep the vehicles’ battery packs from overheating in hot climates, said Zheng Chen, a professor of nanoengineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering and senior author of the study.

“You need high temperature operation in areas where the ambient temperature can reach the triple digits and the roads get even hotter. In electric vehicles, the battery packs are typically under the floor, close to these hot roads,” said Chen, a faculty member of the UC San Diego Sustainable Power and Energy Center. “Also, batteries warm up just from having a current run through during operation. If the batteries cannot tolerate this warmup at high temperature, their performance will quickly degrade.”