A project to develop new battery technology in Australia that promises less weight, faster charging, longer life and better environmental credentials than lithium-ion has yielded significant improvements in energy and power density, opening the door to commercialisation.

Brisbane-based Graphene Manufacturing Group’s graphene aluminium-ion battery (GAIB) technology may change electric vehicle technology as we know it by offering a far superior product compared with lithium-ion.

The breakthrough has potentially far-reaching positive effects nationally as well as for GMG itself and according to the company, ongoing development from GMG’s battery team has resulted in significant GAIB performance increases as well as cell and graphene production improvements this year.

Calculated energy density of the GAIB technology has increased to 290-310Wh/kg, up 93% since the earlier battery update mid-last year.

Performance data was calculated from GMG’s specific coin cell design and testing data, which has been separately verified by the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology at the University of Queensland (UQ) measured against other aluminium-ion batteries and two commonly used lithium-ion batteries produced and used worldwide.

Power density has also increased to about 9350W/kg, up 33% since the previous update.

The firm has reported battery cell enhancements which engenders a growing confidence in the repeatability of battery-grade quality graphene production at scale, developments that have allowed GMG to start the next steps toward commercialisation.

GMG said graphene aluminium-ion batteries offer `three to five times’ the energy density of lithium-ion cells and cannot catch fire, offering obvious safety benefits in vehicles both in the event of a collision and where thermal runaway events can cause significant fires.

Graphene aluminium-ion batteries are also not lethal if swallowed, are completely recyclable and require no cobalt, copper, lithium, manganese or other rare earth metals to be mined for their production.

The manufacturing process of GAIB produces hydrogen as a by-product, offering further uses within the transportation industry to power fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs).

Cooler charging technology

A cooling technology developed by NASA for use in space could significantly speed up the charging of electric cars in the future.

As NASA explained in a blog post, the cooling mechanism developed as part of the Flow Boiling and Condensation Experiment (FBCE) had the potential to reduce the charging time for electric car batteries to well under five minutes.

This would require a current of 1,400 amps, but this would currently overheat the cables.

In an experiment, the researchers have now applied FBCE technology to charging technology for electric cars by passing a dielectric liquid coolant through the charging cable.

According to NASA, a current of 2,400 amps could be achieved in the process.

Basically, the technology was developed because NASA needed to have precise “thermal control” on some components for future moon and Mars missions.

What the engineers mean: The sometimes extreme temperature differences between day and night in space must be compensated for so that technology and humans can survive under these conditions. Since these cooling components have to be as compact and light as possible, they could also be used for other applications on Earth, fast charging, for example.

Helping cars ‘communicate’

NXP Semiconductors has introduced the OrangeBox automotive-grade development platform, which integrates a wide variety of NXP wireless technologies, from broadcast radio, Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth, to secure car access with Ultra-Wideband (UWB) and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), and 802.11p-based V2X.

The OrangeBox is a single, security-enhanced, modular development platform that provides a unified interface between the vehicle’s gateway and its wired and wireless technologies.

By doing so, it provides a means for next-generation cars to communicate securely with the world around them.

Today’s cars are more connected than ever, utilising a variety of wireless technologies to provide drivers with everything from infotainment to advanced safety features.

However, these technologies are distributed throughout the vehicle’s architecture, creating a variety of challenges that will be exacerbated as more and more connectivity features are added, as well as expanding the cyber-attack surface.

OrangeBox unifies these current and emerging external wireless interfaces into a single, security-enhanced connectivity domain controller, which then connects to the secure vehicle gateway through NXP high-speed ethernet.

This consolidated, turn-key approach works to reduce development effort, optimises the movement of data across multiple communication interfaces, enables consistent, state-of-the-art security protection to be applied to all traffic entering the car, and eases the deployment of V2X and cloud applications such as over-the-air updates for software-defined vehicles.

Designed as a modular platform, OrangeBox provides OEMs and Tier-1s with the flexibility to adapt to various regional requirements for cellular connectivity and V2X, as well as enable in-field updates necessary to keep up with changing technologies.

This helps accelerate time-to-market, reduces complexity and provides a complete system reference design-ready for application deployment.