Understanding Lithium-Ion Battery Safety in Electric Vehicles

Understanding lithium-ion battery explosion - Study on safety of electric vehicles

Objective

• The proposed work will primarily focus on understanding the explosion probabilities and technicalities for safe operation of batteries in EVs.

Description

• India is moving towards lithium-ion battery based electric vehicles (EVs) and there is strong technology and policy push by the government to roll out this new revolution in the transportation sector, One of the biggest impediments to enable mass adoption is the inherent safety issue of batteries. The recent battery fires within the country and elsewhere abroad mandates us to understand the underlying cause and fix the issue, At the moment lithium-ion batteries dominate the Electric Vehicle (EV) sector, due to their high performance and cycle life, Considering the importance of the key technology, we are proposing to understand the explosion modes of NMC and LFP battery chemistries using the battery explosion chamber uniquely built at IIT Madras.

Impact

• Carry out EV battery (5.5 Ah max) explosion that are subjected to variety of abuses including electrical and thermal abuse that batteries will undergo in India drive conditions. Correlate the abuse to the explosion characteristics, Complete report highlighting the role of various thermal and electric stresses to the battery explosion.