Ricardo EV Battery Helps Assess New Cell Chemistries

A revolutionary electric vehicle Battery Management System (BMS) has been developed by Ricardo – scalable to a wide range of applications.

One of the most significant impediments to an increased market share for plug-in vehicles is today’s high cost of rechargeable energy storage. This can represent a very significant cost element of a typical battery electric vehicle (BEV), meaning that manufacturers need to strike a balance between product affordability and available range between recharges. For BEVs to break out of this paradigm it is likely to require the development and refinement of battery technologies based on entirely new, more affordable, and lighter weight cell chemistries than those used in today’s lithium-ion based battery packs. To operate effectively, such new cell chemistries are also likely to require a more intensive level of model-based management and control than today’s technology, delivered through a much more sophisticated BMS.