One of the inventors of the lithium-ion battery believes that the batteries used in electric vehicles need to be improved significantly, particularly due to the demands presented by fleets of electric autonomous vehicles.
Speaking to Bloomberg, Akira Yoshino, honorary fellow of Asahi Kasei, the world’s biggest maker of battery separators, said that vehicles engaged in ride-sharing will be used significantly more than traditional vehicles.
“A car shared by 10 people means it will be running 10 times more. Cars are a completely new application, and we’ll have to wait until we find out what kind of batteries will really be needed. The future of batteries depends on what will happen to the future of the automobile society,” Yoshino said.
In the late 1980’s, Asahi Kasei commenced production of lithium-ion batteries with polyacetylene as the anode, although Sony ultimately beat Asahi Kasei to commercialize the technology for mobile phones in 1991.
