Toyota advances battery tech for EVs  

• Dutch kids build smart solar cars

Toyota has announced advances in extending the life of solid-state batteries and optimization of Lithium-ion batteries, both used in the running of electric vehicles.

The development came as a team of students at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands developed world’s first solar-powered electric vehicle that automatically cleans carbon pollution from the air as it drives.

The Oracle Today gathered from online sources the battery optimization technology developed by Toyota would start impacting the quality of electric vehicles by 2026; and would make electric vehicles or EVs run longer without stopping to charge.

According to reports, the new Toyota battery technology will improve running distance with lithium-ion batteries by some 88 percent from the current average of 330 miles to 621 miles on a single charge. Even charging time will also drop by almost half and ease the concern of most EV users.

With solid-state batteries, originally reated for items like pacemakers and smartwatches and similar in structure to lithium-ion batteries, will now take motorists approximately 745 miles on one charge.

Toyota’s new breakthrough could put EVs with solid-state batteries on the market by 2027, using production automation for quick and cheap.

The technology, pundits say, will cost the cost of running on EV which currents costs more to charge than buying petroleum fuels for internal combustion engines. Currently, it costs about half as much to power an electric car than it does a gasoline-powered vehicle. Thus, shorter charging time will translate to lower cost per minute.

EVs also leave a much smaller impact on the environment. Just one electric car on the road can save 1.6 tons of pollution annually, while gas-powered vehicles produce, on average, over 10,000 pounds of harmful gases per year.

But more interesting development in the quest for cleaner and smarter transportation energy comes with innovation by Dutch college students who have developed a solar-powered car that also clears carbon from air as it runs.

The car called Zero Emission Mobility of ZEM is a sleek solar-powered electric vehicle that cleans carbon pollution from the air as it drives.

ZEM, developed by a team of students at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands with materials made with recycled plastics formed by a 3D printer, is suited with a carbon capture device on its underbelly.

The ZEM has lithium-ion batteries from Dutch company Cleantron, gets up to 15% of its charge via solar panels from Watllab, and has its carbon output studied thanks to a lifestyle analysis conducted with SimaPro software.

For the ZEM car to remove carbon from the air, two filters on the underside of the car allow clean air to pass through while trapping carbon dioxide. The filters have to be emptied every 200 miles.

The ZEM team car team has already designed an EV charging station that also extracts the carbon dioxide so that it can be repurposed for other clean fuels or safely stored to keep it out of the atmosphere.

The ZEM carbon capture device currently captures only 4.41 pounds of carbon dioxide for every 20,000 miles –– this is only 0.04% of the average vehicle’s annual carbon and less than one-tenth the amount that the average tree absorbs annually.

The team says it continues to work to bring the Zem car to what they believe is its full potential — carbon neutrality.

“We pulled it off: Thrifty-five students with a lot of eagerness but a lot less experience than the main industry that we are competing with,” says Nikki Okkels, the external relations manager for TU/ecomotive, told reporters. “We’re just showing the big industry what is possible.”