New Battery Could Power Electric Cars 620 Miles (1,000km) on Single Charge

The average American drives about 30 miles (48 kilometers) per day, according to AAA, yet many people are still reluctant to buy electric cars that can travel three times that distance on a single charge. This so-called range anxiety is one reason gasoline-powered vehicles still rule the road, but a team of scientists is working to ease those fears.


Mareike Wolter, Project Manager of Mobile Energy Storage Systems at Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft in Dresden, Germany, is working with a team on a new battery that would give electric cars a range of about 620 miles (1,000 km) on a single charge.


Nearly 50 percent of each cell is devoted to components such as the housing, the anode (the battery's negative terminal), the cathode (the battery's positive terminal) and the electrolyte, the liquid that transports the charged particles. Additional space is needed inside the car to wire the battery packs to the vehicle's electrical system.


It is essentially a complete redesign which removes the 50% wasted space inside current battery housings.