Battery cells as told by a slide, oranges and a chocolate aero
I would hazard a guess that if challenged in a pub, most automotive engineers would not be able to tell you how an electric battery for an EV actually works. They would probably be able to tell you about the battery pack and how it powers the electric motor. They may well describe the battery management system which monitors the health status of the battery cells within the battery pack (though this may not constitute pub appropriate conversation), and I suspect there may even be a few mumbled words about electrons and cobalt whilst they desperately try to recall their GCSE physics.
Until recently, I would count myself within this cohort of automotive professionals. That was until Karandeep Bhogal (who I should disclose is my husband) joined battery material company Nexeon, and our dinner time conversations required some sly wikipedia-ing on my part. Nexeon, like StoreDot and Sila Nanotechnologies are developing silicon based anodes for batteries. I shall attempt to explain why that is significant armed with my new fangled knowledge.
Electro-chemists and material scientists, look away now before I offend you with my terrible (and immensely unscientific) analogy.
Firstly, battery packs are made of battery cells. For an idea of scale, the standard range Tesla Model 3 has 2,976 battery…
