The national plan for power batteries in the United States

The “EV Everywhere Challenge” is one of the series of programs of the Department of Energy Clean Energy Challenge Program. Aims to achieve rapid technological development through multi-party collaboration in research and industry, and to realize the commercialization of pure electric vehicles (referring to plug-in hybrid vehicles and pure electric vehicles) in the next 10 years, so that the pure electric vehicles to compete with conventional fuel vehicles and is accepted by ordinary consumers from an economic point of view. To this end, the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) under the Ministry of Energy has released the “EV Everywhere Challenge Blueprint”. Focusing on the five major areas of power battery, electric drive system, vehicle lightweight, high-efficiency energy control, and charging facilities, technology development is carried out to achieve the performance improvement and cost reduction of pure electric drive vehicles. Figure 1 shows the technical indicators of the power battery system of electric vehicles.

The realization of the technical goal of this blueprint will enable a pure electric vehicle with a driving range of 280 miles to have a total cost of purchase and operation equivalent to that of a similarly sized fuel vehicle after 5 years of purchase. The “Electric Vehicles Ubiquitous Challenge Blueprint” focuses on supporting the research and development of lithium-ion battery technology applied to plug-in hybrid vehicles. In 2022, the specific energy of the battery system is 250W·h/kg, the energy density is 400W·h/L, the power density is 2000Wkg, and the cost is US$125/kw·h. Among them, the short-term goal (2012-2017) is to use high-capacity cathode materials, high-voltage electrolytes, and high-capacity tin-based or silicon-based alloy anode materials to increase the specific energy of the battery system from 100w·h/kg to 250W·h/ kg, but in-depth research work is needed in terms of performance and life;

The long-term goal (2017-2027) is mainly to support the development of post-lithium-ion battery technologies, such as lithium-sulfur, lithium-air, magnesium-ion and zinc-air batteries, etc., carry out in-depth research on life, energy efficiency, power density and other important performance parameters to realize their commercial applications.

To achieve the above goals, the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, the Office of Advanced Energy Research Projects and the Office of Science under the Ministry of Energy will work together to jointly promote the technological advancement of vehicle power batteries. The Vehicle Technology Project of the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy focuses on supporting the research and development of advanced technologies, and increases the market share of hybrid and electric vehicles by promoting the development of power batteries and other electrochemical energy storage devices. The Energy Advanced Research Project Office supports the Batteries for Electrical Energy Storage in Transportation (BEEST) and the Robust Affordable Next Generation Energy Storage Systems (RANGESS) project in the transportation field, to develop high energy density and low energy storage beyond traditional lithium-ion batteries. It mainly includes advanced battery system, battery structure and manufacturing process, etc. The battery system level indicators set are: the specific energy reaches 200W·h/kg, the energy density reaches 300W·h/L, the cycle life reaches 1000 times, and the cost is no more than $250/kW·h. The Office of Science uses the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR) of the Basic Energy Sciences Program (BESP) uses a new generation of nanoscience tools to discover and design next-generation energy storage technologies at the atomic and molecular levels, achieving a five-fold increase in energy density within five years and a cost reduction to one-fifth of the current one. For power batteries used in the transportation sector, the technical goals set are: the energy density reaches 400W·h/kg, the power density reaches 800W/kg, the cycle life reaches 1000 times (80%DOD, C/5), the calendar life reaches 15 years, and the cost reaches 100 US dollars/kw·h.