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Developing Batteries for the Cars of the Future
The newly established Competence Network North (Kompetenzverbund Nord, KVN) has now officially commenced work on the development of high-tech batteries for the use in (hybrid) electric cars. For this collaborative project, various educational and research institutions have joined forces, including the Universities of Münster, Hannover, and Bochum, as well as RWTH Aachen University, the Düsseldorf Max Planck Institut für Eisenforschung, and the Research Centre Jülich.
The development of efficient high-performance batteries is at the center of research in the area of electric mobility - electric cars can only become competitive if they are powered by batteries which have a long lifespan and are environmentally-friendly. Thus one of the aims of the collaboration is to find methods of characterizing new high tech materials and to investigate their potential for use in batteries. At the moment, lithium-ion batteries are the most promising path to the realization of electrically-powered transport. Therefore one of the objectives is to optimize lithium-ion batteries for use in the electric cars of the future.
The research of the consortium, which is made possible by an € 11 million grant from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, is to boost German know-how in state-of-the-art power train technology. Battery research however can help to develop applications in other fields as well. To give an example, batteries can also be used as storage elements in decentralised energy systems, so as to prevent fluctuations in energy production by wind and solar power plants.