Altair claims electric car battery service life of 20+ years

Altairnano (NASDAQ: ALTI), a provider of advanced nanomaterials for use in energy, automotive, life sciences and industrial applications, says it has completed 15,000 deep charge/discharge cycles of its innovative NanoSafe battery cells and found little degradation.

Even after 15,000 cycles, the cells still retained over 85% of their original charge capacity, the company claimed.

If true, this would represent a significant improvement over conventional, commercially available rechargeable battery technologies such as lithium ion, nickel metal hydride and nickel cadmium. These other commercially available rechargeable batteries typically retain that level of charge capacity only through approximately 1,000 deep charge/discharge cycles.

The battery cells were tested in Altairnano’s labs at 10C (6 minute) charge and discharge rates. They were deep charged and discharged, meaning they were taken to 100% charge and 0% charge respectively during the 6-minute cycles. The company claims that although tests involved full charges and discharges, partial charging and discharging of the battery does not appear to impact the life or the holding charge capacity of the batteries i.e. they exhibit no memory loss.

In theory, a 15,000 charge cycle life would translate into a battery that would last greater than 40 years if it was charged daily, as would be the case in an electric vehicle or plug-in hybrid electric vehicle environment. However, in practice, other wear and tear factors would realistically limit the actual life of the batteries to probably 20 years.