Raghu Das, IDTechEx CEO advises, “Too much emphasis is put on waiting for widely-deployed, solid-state batteries to sharply increase range without costing a fortune. That may not happen until 2030 but the savvy car companies are doing a wealth of less-glamorous options in the meantime. Cable reduction by wireless signaling, high voltage, better layout. We even see 10% more range achievable from improved battery-management software. Efficiency gains, such as those from wide-bandgap semiconductors, multiply into less cooling, space, and weight. Too few are working on low-power autonomy to increase range.”
He envisages a lot of grunt work and no silver bullet. He continues,
“In-wheel motors replace 20 parts, in-mold electronics and multifunctional composites each replace up 100 parts every time they are introduced, big die-castings and structural batteries replace up to 370 parts – you can do all of these together, increasing range by both efficiency and weight reduction. Lower-cost batteries mean we can now viably fit bigger ones to increase range. That can be environmental when they last longer through fewer charge cycles and have trickle charging from the new solar bodywork. Holistic thermal management using better heat pumps and the new thermal insulators and conductors – we predict large range gains from this. Our report gives far more options, best practice, and the 20-year view of this existential struggle.”
Examples of car range miles vs temperature C with climate control. Source: IDTechEx