Battery energy storage in electric vehicles by 2030

This work aims to review battery-energy-storage (BES) to understand whether, given the present and near future limitations, the best approach should be the promotion of multiple technologies, namely support of battery-electric-vehicles (BEVs), hybrid thermal electric vehicles (HTEVs), and hydrogen fuel-cell-electric-vehicles (FCEVs), rather than BEVs alone. While battery technologies have dramatically improved especially in the last 25 years, the dismissal of internal-combustion-engine-vehicles (ICEVs) in favor of BEVs has only been the result of an environmental constraint rather than a techno-economical advantage. BEVs still suffer from techno-economic disadvantages vs ICEVs and are also less environmentally friendly on a cradle-to-grave life-cycle-analysis (LCA) than HTEVs which are using hydrocarbon fuels. Simplified plug-in series HTEVs fitted with a slightly larger battery can work electric over the certification cycles, which are the most common mode of operation of the vehicle. These vehicles can also recharge the battery by using a small, high-efficiency internal-combustion-engine (ICE) driving a generator when plug-in recharge is impractical. Further improvements in battery technology within the next decade to solid-state lithium batteries may permit double the specific energy per unit mass (sigma(m)) as well as unit volume (sigma(v)). This will lead to an increment of the range and the miles-per-gallon-equivalent, in other words, the energy efficiency. The economic and environmental costs of these novel BEVs are still difficult to forecast. Plug-in HTEVs, fueled with hydrocarbon or even hydrogen fuel, and plug-in hydrogen FCEVs, may work together with BEVs to cover the different needs of personal mobility by 2030.