Volvo are looking for a new way for lightening batteries without losing power

Volvo are looking for a new way for lightening batteries without losing power

Among the biggest challenges is the size for hybrid and battery cars, weight and cost of their battery packs. A new joint project involves Volvo ,and the Imperial College London is attempting to address all three simultaneously by supplementing the battery with ultracapacitors that can quickly store and discharge energy. That part isn't new a number of companies are working on ultracaps for battery vehicles but this portion of the $4.5 million research program, funded by the European Union, is unique in that its energy storage doubles as part of the car.

According to Emile Greenhalgh, the Imperial College aeronautics engineer who is coordinating the three-year project, "Our lightweight carbon-fiber panels can carry a mechanical load and store energy simultaneously, and we're working toward achieving a 15 percent weight savings in a Volvo hybrid test car." The ultracapacitors won't replace the battery pack in hybrid cars that's still down the road but their presence can make it smaller, lighter and cheaper.

It might be a year and a half before work with an actual car, but the Imperial College team is looking at the spare wheel well and floor pans as potential locations for its structural ultracapacitors. Mr. Greenhalgh said that if safety issues can be resolved, tomorrow's cars could be drawing power from their roofs, hoods and doors.

Initial work has been focused on increasing the surface area of the conductive carbon fiber at the nanoscale, so they can hold a bigger charge without losing strength. "We started in late 2004 with a demonstrator struggling to produce enough energy to light an LED," Mr. Greenhalgh said. "Now we're able to light an LED for 20 minutes after a 10-second charge."

Passengers are insulated from electric shock by putting the energized carbon fiber inside a sandwich with conventional composite materials. The researchers are looking at what would happen if the panels were broken up in an accident. Mr. Greenhalgh said he doesn't expect that problem to be a "showstopper" because the voltages aren't high and the battery energy is dispersed. "We've stuck a screwdriver through our charged materials and not a lot happened," he said.

Imperial College's collaboration with the automaker is recent, but a Volvo researcher, Per-Ivar Sellergren, first proposed an alternative method of incorporating batteries into body parts as long ago as 1989. After further development, he said in an e-mail message, Volvo patented that concept in 1995.

"Volvo's role is to provide competence on how to integrate this technology into future vehicles and to provide knowledge in terms of pros and cons when it comes to costs and user-friendliness," Mr. Sellergren said. The European Union project also includes research on the integrating battery into body panels, and a Swedish company, Swerea Sicomp, is working on that.

Volvo has developed a battery electric version of the C30 (planned for limited test fleet production by early 2011) and a plug-in hybrid, which it plans to market by 2012. Mr. Sellergren said that supercap panels worked best with hybrid cars ("where you want power and not so much energy") and the battery panels with pure E.V.'s ("which need range and therefore much energy, but moderate power"). He predicted that in a decade these stealth energy sources "could fully replace existing batteries."

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