For as long as electric motorcycles have been on the market, the complaints that one hears are consistently as follows:
- Electric Bikes don’t have the range.
- Electric Bikes take too long to charge.
- Electric Bikes will be too heavy with huge batteries.
- The Lifecycle of Electric Bike batteries is way too short.
- Electric motorcycle batteries are hazardous and can cause fires.
Well, as of 2024 for some, and likely 2025 for all-electric motorcycle manufacturers, your assumptions would be wrong.
Powermag is an industry magazine that tracks the development of electrical batteries, their chemistry, and technological advancements and potential. Most of the information provided for the article comes from a variety of sources, cited below:
https://www.powermag.com/blog/move-over-lithium-ion-theres-a-new-e-bike-battery-in-town/
There are at least three new battery technologies that have either arrived or will arrive in the next twelve months that will make all the above statements patently wrong.
Just as the telecommunications industry has revolutionized itself, with internet speeds that have increased hundreds of times from when dial-up modems were in use, battery technology has now and will continue to become more and more efficient. Breakthroughs in battery technology will revolutionize motorcycling, and are doing so, as I write this article.
Every negative assumption that has been placed by the market in front of electric motorcycle manufacturers and more importantly the battery manufacturers will be removed in 2024.
These are the facts, so let’s deal with the issues one by one.
1) Electric motorcycles don’t have the range.
New 48-volt systems allow motorcycle range to exceed 330 miles on a charge. Not only that but the motorcycle can be recharged to 90% of this charge in 12 minutes or 80% in 8 minutes. Equally interesting is that the technology behind this is open to all electric motorcycle manufacturers. Lithium Titanate batteries are stable and will last 20 years with over 15,000 charging cycles, so buying new batteries will become a thing of the past.
2) Electric motorcycle batteries take too long to charge.
Lithium-titanate batteries (LTO) now use Artificial Intelligence or (AI) to regulate voltage. LTO utilizes nanocrystals on the surface of its anode, giving it its well-known fast charging and fire-resistance attributes. LTO can compensate for energy density, making this robust workhorse of chemistry viable for micro-mobility applications. The AI system can optimize the battery’s energy density in preparation for power spikes needed to get an electric motorcycle up a hill and to a destination before running out of power in a mountainous area. The battery’s AI can learn from experience and improve its performance with every cycle. This would have seemed like science fiction just a few years ago.
Combined, AI and LTO can solve a series of significant problems associated with electric motorcycles.
Charging Speed: LTO chemistry has a more active electrode surface area which allows electrical charges to move quicker and more easily. This interprets into high currents with faster charging and longer life cycles. Charging times of less than 20 minutes, as with Lightnings 48 Volt, 12-minute charging is now possible.
Longer Lifecycle: LTO batteries do not degrade as do lithium-ion batteries. Fast charging typically degrades the lifecycle of lithium-ion causing their life cycle to drop as low as 500 to 1000 cycles or one to two years. By contrast, LTO can last more than 20 years or 15,000 cycles.
No More Fires: LTO is free of metal oxides. The battery can be punctured, overheated, or treated poorly and it will not have a thermal runaway, like lithium-ion batteries.
Cost Efficiency: Battery life is twenty times longer than with lithium-ion batteries. Since the batteries have shorter charging times (which reduce operational costs of overnight charging) they simply last longer, are easily recycled, and meet most owner’s sustainability goals.
Lithium-Silicon Batteries
New technologies for battery development have not been limited to LTO battery technology. “Lithium-silicon batteries have the potential to hold huge amounts of lithium ions due to silicons 10x higher capacity than graphite. This quickly translates in cost parity for EVs and creates smaller, better lithium batteries of all electronics and energy storage.” Group 14. A major advantage to lithium-silicon technology is that it ‘not only gives a massive boost to lithium’s performance and energy density within the battery but it also seamlessly fits into existing battery manufacturing processes.” Group 14.
The ability to instantly integrate silicon-based anode materials into existing battery cell manufacturing lines reduces reformulation work, zeros out retrofitting and the capital expenditures that would be required and significantly reduces the time it has taken or will take to market these new products.
Similar to LTO, lithium-silicon batteries attributes are:
1. Higher energy density
2. Faster charging than previously with lithium-ion batteries
3. They possess comparable stability to graphite, allowing innovation formerly unimagined.
Group 14 has been working on silicon carbon anodes and one significant problem, silicon swelling. Group14 has solved the swelling issue (a 3x expansion of the silicon itself) by creating a nanocarbon scaffold that acts as a host material for silicon and “stabilizes the silicon during what is called the lithiation (charging) and delithiation (discharging) processes. This innovation delivers greatly improved energy density and cycle efficiency for the lithium batter cells it lives in.” According to Group14,
“When adopted, the lithium-silicon battery will replace the lithium-ion battery, thus enabling the true electrification of everything today—not tomorrow.”
Due to battery research, climate change, fossil fuel regulation, and new legislation concerning the burning of fossil fuels, electrification has taken massive strides into providing efficient, cost-effective, safe transportation designs for EVs of both four-wheel and two-wheel design. The future has arrived.
Ciao…
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