DRIVE: Improving Electric Vehicle Technology

The transportation sector has been set the ambitious target of a 60% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 in comparison with 1990 levels. Road transport accounts for approximately 80% of the sector’s emissions and must rapidly transition to low or zero carbon vehicles such as plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) or electric vehicles (EV). The Irish government wants 1,000,000 EVs by 2030, but at the end of 2022, we had just 70,000 (approx.). To increase uptake of electric vehicles, we must make them more attractive to consumers by addressing concerns such as cost, safety, realistic driving range, and battery pack lifespan. All of these concerns can be related to the thermal or heat management of the vehicle’s battery pack, where significant improvements can and must be made.

We propose to maintain electric vehicle batteries in the optimal temperature range by directly immersing them in, or cooling them with, special liquids that don’t conduct electricity. This approach hasn’t been implemented in electric vehicles yet. If we can allow those liquids to boil and condense at the batteries, we can take advantage of a phenomenon known as latent heat transfer, which means we can achieve large rates of cooling with only small temperature changes, which is exactly what electric vehicle battery packs require.