Enovate, an electric vehicle manufacturer, currently sells an all-electric SUV. The company, however, has its sights set on introducing a new vehicle in 2021 that will feature a solid-state battery, technology that uses solid electrodes and solid electrolytes, rather than liquid or polymer electrolytes found in lithium-ion or lithium polymer batteries.
The Chinese automaker markets the SKY ME-7 electric SUV, which uses the conventional battery technology employed by Tesla and other EV companies. The new vehicle, named the Enovate ME-S or ME Sport, will be a high-performance sedan with an ultramodern design that includes cleaving doors, multiple interior screens, 5G connectivity, biometric analysis tech to monitor driver alertness and a warning system for pedestrians.
The interior will also include a fold-away steering wheel since the car will have Level 4 autonomy to pilot itself under most conditions. The ME-S will reportedly go 0 to 60 in just over three seconds, allowing it to compete with current Tesla models available in China.
The vehicle’s big draw though will be its solid-state battery, which electric vehicle designers, car companies and energy storage engineers believe is the future of the EV industry. The advantages of solid-state batteries include greatly reduced charging times, often to a few minutes for a full charge. The technology, however, has not yet been demonstrated to work for large scale designs.
Another advantage of solid-state batteries will be its capacity for very high energy density energy storage given the absence of liquid electrolytes. High-density storage would greatly increase the range of electric vehicles as well as the duration of the device. In theory, an electric car with a solid state battery the same size as a current power cell could potentially travel 1,000 miles or more between charges, which would end the “range anxiety” experienced by current EV drivers.
Finally, solid-state batteries would be much safer since they don’t use flammable liquid gel or polymer electrolytes for energy storage. Also, by building in-cell isolation systems within the solid-state battery itself would allow batteries to immediately respond to failure, protecting adjacent cells from other units from damage and simplifying the repair process for batteries.
Whether the solid-state battery becomes a reality at Enovate remains to be seen. For now, the ME-S is simply a computer rendering, however, if the vehicle does finally make it off the assembly line, it would change EV technology forever.
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