Focus: Performance tradeoff
With battery cost projections from different consultants around the globe, companies and consumers alike should handle the trilemma of what they want out of their electric vehicles the most – range (translating directly to energy density), charging rate (translating to the time taken for a full/partial charge at a charging station) or cycle life (directly proportional to the cost of ownership of the battery). All the current battery systems out there have a mutually exclusive parameter set for the most part and it’s time to reset the focus on what’s more important.
• What’s more important from a company’s sales perspective?
• What do consumers want?
• Can the parameter set be optimized?
Karthik Ganesh
Battery Engineer
Mercedes-Benz Research and Development, India