Zoomi Life

One of the things that holds back electric car production and main stream acceptance is the lifespan of the average battery, be it lithium-ion, nickel-metal hydride, or standard lead acid. Since the bank of batteries in an electric vehicle amount to up to half its cost, this is obviously a large economic concern.

Well, Southern California Edison (SCE) demonstrated a lithium-ion battery capable of staying within operating parameters for over 180,000 miles. A series of tests at the company’s Electric Vehicle Technical Center in California proved this conclusion. While the results are preliminary and no third-party testing has been done yet, it’s extremely promising.

Based on those results, though, the U.S. Department of Energy has given SCE a grant to continue testing and to prove the results on a full-scale model (the original test was on a 1/6 scale).

Now consider that the average driver only drives about 15,000 miles a year in this country. Factor that over 180,000 miles and you’ve got 12 years of solid service from a battery pack. That would mean that your near-zero maintenance electric car could conceivably be cheaper than its gasoline counterpart in the long-run, even if up-front costs are higher.

Pretty darn cool.

Don’t expect to see this technology in production vehicles for at least two or three more years, but it’s a great leap forward and along with other battery life breakthroughs could propel electric vehicles to the mainstream, bypassing gasoline hybrids.

Sources: 1, 2