Battery chemists recommend fluoride, just like your friendly dentist

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People much smarter than your author toiling at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois have been working on improving the characteristics of EV batteries for some time. Their recent work has led them to the surprising discovery that fluoridated components could provide an immense benefit to battery life when used in place of electrolytic liquid.

How? It all comes down to protecting the battery’s inner workings. In a lithium-ion battery, ions move from cathode to anode through electrolytic liquid, but existing technology has yet to advance far enough to permit that liquid to properly prevent degradation of the anode. This massively oversimplified description explains why the battery in your smartphone sucks after a couple of years.

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Same thing happens in EVs — to a degree, at least. But, when researchers swapped out the traditional liquid for fluoridated components, degradation slowed immensely. “The key difference in our new electrolyte is the substitution of fluorine for hydrogen atoms in the ring-like structure of the cation part of the ionic liquid,” said one of the researchers. “This made all the difference in maintaining high performance for hundreds of cycles in a test lithium metal cell.”

Meanwhile, halfway around the world, Toyota is continuing to place several eggs in the hydrogen basket. A report from Japan says the company is aiming to launch a next-gen fuel cell in the next couple of years which could reduce costs by half while increasing range by about 20 per cent. As most are aware, a sheer lack of refueling infrastructure has hamstrung the adoption of fuel cell cars in many markets. The storage of hydrogen for this purpose is tricky, even if it is literally the most abundant element in the known universe.

With that in mind, the Big T is also plowing investment into supporting hydrogen production and working to standardize tanks for large commercial vehicles. This broad approach could pay dividends; after all, it behooves Toyota to try and solve multiple pieces of the hybrid puzzle in order to help foster adoption of this alternative fuel.