How many cell phone batteries does it take to move a car?

In 2019, the Swedish Academy awarded him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to three researchers for creating something that would change our lives in a very short time: the battery of lithium-ion, also known as Li-ion. They were the German chemist John B. Goodenough, who after receiving the award became the oldest person to win a Nobel Prize for his 97th birthday, the Professor of English Chemistry Mr. Stanley Whittingham, and the Japanese Akira Yoshino. The first two have developed their careers and live in EE.UU. while the oriental researcher, has always remained in Japan, and it was he who, in 1985, created the first commercially viable lithium-ion battery.

“Since entering the market in 1991, These batteries laid the foundation for a wireless society, fossil fuel free, and are of great benefit to mankind “, were the arguments of this sentence. “Lithium-ion batteries are used around the world to recharge portable electronic devices that we use to communicate, work, study, listen to music and seek knowledge. They also enabled the development of electric cars long range and the energy storage from renewable sources, such as solar and wind power “, indicated the Swedish academy in your opinion.

The development of lithium-ion batteries has enabled our cell phones have a greater autonomy per charge and that recharge every day in less time, to the point that the automotive industry has been able to advance more quickly in the field of electric car thanks to this development. But a point of development and need has been reached, which has been automobile industry the one who started generate profits for household utilities or on a smaller scale in this way of accumulating and using energy.

But an interesting report who published Kia Engines a few days ago, lets us take real dimension of battery use which requires a car comparing it to a cellphone.

As a basic concept let’s say a battery is an electrochemical device which stores energy inside of a chemical reaction, and is able to release it in the form of electricity. The big difference between cell phone batteries and electric car batteries is the amount of power each requires depending on how it is used.

Thus, in phone batteries, the three or four cells that generate this chemical reaction are plan and very thin, but since they have to produce less energy, they require less refrigeration. On the other hand, those of a car like the Kia e-Niro that the car manufacturer used as a sample for the comparison of this study, 294 cells are used, in a package called “lithium polymer in sachet or sachet”, which although still flat to be able to be accommodated on the floor of a car, it has more volume by the need have a life cycle upper.

The smartphone battery there are only a few 3 millimeters thick and an approximate weight of 80 grams, while that of a Kia e-Niro weighs 445 kilos, in its most powerful version. But since what we have to take into account are the KWh (kilowatt-hours) because that’s what allows us comparison between a cell phone and a car, you should know that a battery of an average phone has 0.0148 kWh while a car like him Kia has 64kWh. So if we multiply the performance of a cell phone battery to match that of a car battery, we will find that we need 4,444 batteries.

However, if we multiply the 80 grams of the battery for the same number of units, we have reached 355 kilos and not the 445 released by Kia than the weight of your battery, and that too has an explanation. Because precisely to be a battery with many more cells, which produce much more energy, also require a more complex cooling system. While the phone is air cooled, the car goes through a water system, and as if that weren’t enough, a car must have a packaging system and attach this security to this weight which is housed in the floor, under the occupants’ seats, especially for collisions, then the whole system is considerably heavier.

The subject is fascinating and intriguing at the same time. Because the world is filling up with batteries of all kinds and although many companies OEM (original equipment manufacturer) they start to manufacture almost completely recycled car batteries, in most cases they should not retrofit a car, but for other uses. And if for each car to which the battery needs to be changed, we have 4,444 of those we use for our phones, which is the most common use given to these phones in everyday life Li-ion batteries, the number is scary.

It will be the subject of many other notes, because if the fossil carbon contaminates, the batteries to throw away one day, at the end of its cycle too. So the question is still there.

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