Turns out the crafty Germans are at it again! As reported in the Fraunhofer Research News recently, a group there is working with something called a redox flow battery. Basically it uses a liquid instead of a solid to store the charge. This isn’t new, but the team has brought the energy density up to that of Li-Ion batteries, and that is new!
So, this technology has the potential to couple the fast refill times of liquid fuels with the energy efficiency of electric vehicles. While the Fraunhofer group only has a 1/5th scale demo vehicle going, they do plan on doing a full sized demonstration car in the near future.
Small demonstration vehicle using the new redox flow battery. Photo copyright Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften Ostfalia.
What’s neat about this is that refill stations could then re-charge the liquids at a large, fixed installation (the e-gas station) and just re-use the liquid! While all this is very early in it’s infancy, I think it’s a pretty neat idea.
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Those guys just saved the car’s future. Hopefully this technology will get rolling quickly and the common man’s car will be electric, saving valuable gasoline for true enthusiasts and for motor sport.