Space Matters

With the ever-increasing popularity of electric vehicles (EVs), companies must compete in price, range, and cargo space to capture more of the market. 

Tremendous activity is happening in the EV energy storage space to optimize range, size and longevity. Many companies are working to implement solid-state batteries among other innovations, many of which are still years away from mass market adoption. 

So how are companies optimizing energy storage systems in EVs?

One way electric vehicle companies, like Tesla, are improving their energy storage systems is by building batteries into every part of the vehicle possible. Tesla’s new battery pack for the Model Y is being built into structural parts of the vehicle, rather than limiting batteries to placement inside the space dedicated for the energy storage system. 

This adoption of structural energy storage reduces the number of parts required, greatly simplifying the assembly process and decreasing the total mass of the vehicle. As a result, improvements in efficiency and range, and a decrease in price, can be expected.

Where else can a battery be placed? 

Battery cells come in rigid form factors. This limits where and how they can be implemented without forcing major design tradeoffs. For example, if an EV company wants to increase the size of its energy storage system, they may have to sacrifice cargo space that could have otherwise been an attractive feature to consumers.

But what if energy storage technologies were not limited by the shapes and sizes they traditionally come in. 

Now, it’s no longer a question of "if.”

A Flexible Future

Capacitech provides a high-power storage option that can be integrated into complex geometries such as the parts of the vehicle a traditional battery does not fit into. It’s called the Cable-Based Capacitor, or CBC. 

The CBC is a flexible, wire-shaped supercapacitor optimized to populate unconventional space that would otherwise be left unused. The CBC helps designers expand the energy storage system to new places to complement batteries and improve performance. Unlike traditional supercapacitors, CBCs can be routed throughout an EV’s wiring infrastructure, adding energy storage to pre-existing systems without sacrificing space that could be used to add more batteries or cargo space.

Integrating CBCs into energy storage systems would allow engineers to take advantage of their system’s structure better than ever. As a result, these systems would improve performance, enable new features and streamline design.

Learn More

Check out www.capacitechenergy.com or reach out to us at hello@capacitechenergy.com.