The end result will give, to decision makers, a clearer view of the potentially effective investments in research, development and manufacture. However, all these results will give a stronger knowledge base to develop the future Electric and Hybrid / Plug-In Hybrid electric vehicles by the vehicle OEM’s and the supply industry.

It’s expected that optimization of the design & the formulation will overcome the life duration problems and improve significantly the energy density. It needs to be emphasized that the cells were not manufactured on an industrial scale. The alternative systems (to NCA commercial and reference one) provide a potential for further improvement and possible application. The main conclusion under all the results is that no chemistry fulfil all the requirements on the performance, durability, economical and safety points of view. The main objective, and not the less, is to evaluate the impact of the cell characteristics on the ageing mechanisms. Post-mortem analysis were also performed at 3 different ageing steps (0, 6 and 12/15 months). In total, up to 220 cells have been employed across the various test activities (safety tests on new and pre-aged cells), cycling (EV and PHEV) and calendar tests (12-15 months). In each case the evaluations are carried out on representative size high energy cells (with a capacity of approximately 40 Ah), produced industrially. NCA is the current mainstream manufacturing technology used by SAFT and is therefore the base case against which the other 3 technologies are compared using the same design, same electrolyte and same electrode material. The work achieved from laboratory testing and other analysis deliver the comparative data covering performance, life, cost, recycling and safety/abuse characteristics. The assessments concern traction batteries for the automotive sector (EV, PHEV & HEV-APU). HELIOS is a 4 year project to carry out a comparative assessment of 4 types of lithium-ion battery technologies, selected as the most promising technologies being developed across the world: NCA, NMC, LMO & LFP/C. Executive Summary: Battery reliability and safety are the key issue for the commercialization of x-EV vehicles, especially for High Energy applications, requiring a large amount of energy stored on board.

Project helios 2.5