All electric car owners will tell you that the worst enemy of these vehicles is the cold. When the mercury falls, so does autonomy. A chemical reaction known for years, which did not really have any solutions, at least until February 5.
It was on this date that Changan Automobile and CATL were chosen to present a new electric car. At first glance, this vehicle looks like a standard car. The Nevo A06 is a 5-door sedan, very classic. But under the hood, its battery is very special.
It has a sodium-ion design, much more resistant to cold than the lithium-iron-phosphate widely used in our electric cars today. If the sedan is not yet available for sale, its presentation in the middle of winter in the city of Yakeshi (in Inner Mongolia, one of the coldest regions of China) demonstrates the ability of this new battery to resist the cold.
The CATL engineers who built this device are very confident. They speak of exceptional energy conservation, of the order of 90% below -40°C. For the extreme winters of these regions, it’s a godsend.
Why don’t electric cars like the cold?
To understand why this sodium-ion battery is a real feat, we must start by looking at the composition and operation of a traditional battery. With a classic structure (lithium-ion), theThe loss of autonomy linked to the cold is between 10 and 30%.
With the cold, chemical reactions inside the battery (which will eventually produce electricity) are rarer. The ions move more slowly, the internal resistance increases and the battery struggles more to deliver or accept power. In other words: less autonomy, slower charging and sometimes reduced energy recovery when braking.
Add to this that an electric car, unlike a thermal vehicle, does not have “free” heat produced by the engine to heat the cabin, and you have a second problem. Heating the interior of an electric car requires the use of a heat pump, which is very energy-intensive.
A major challenge
If the presentation of the Nevo A06 has not yet made the headlines, it will be interesting to see the behavior of this new type of battery in the spring. If the announced performances are confirmed in real conditions, sodium-ion batteries could become the benchmark in the Nordic countries, with very cold winters.
We obviously think of Canada, Russia, but also closer to us, regions like Scandinavia. Even certain French regions could benefit from these new types of batteriesespecially in high mountains.
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