IBM Lithium-Air Batteries For Electric Cars Do 500 Miles/Charge

While electric cars are seen as the future of the automotive industry with the depleting fossil fuels, they have still a long way to go before they can be taken as a serious replacement for gasoline run cars. The major challenges are the charging time, travel range after each charge and the cost.

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It seems that Nissan is already coming up with a solution for the #-Link-Snipped-#, IBM is now working to get the second issue solved, i.e. to get a longer travel range between each charging. The Lithium-ion batteries used in today's electric cars provide an average distance of 100 miles between charges, but the new Lithium-air battery being developed by IBM claims to provide a range of 500 miles (800 kilometre).

The lithium-air batteries have energy density 1000 times more than that of lithium-ion batteries using metal oxides. The lithium-air batteries uses carbon as the positive electrode reacting with oxygen to create electric current. The use of carbon also makes the unit lighter.

But physicist Winfried Wilcke, working on developing the battery at IBM's laboratories, claims to be facing problems because of the chemical instabilities which are limiting the lifespan of the cell while recharging, making them unsuitable for using in cars. But Wilcke is working on a solution for alternative conducting solution with fellow physicist Alessandro Curioni using Blue Gene supercomputer at IBM's research lab in Switzerland. They have already found an alternative but are unwilling to share it for the moment.

IBM is expected to ready the working prototype by 2013 and we can all expect to see them used in electric vehicles by 2020. That is definitely a long way to go.

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