I’ve had a couple of interesting chats in recent weeks about the ‘right’ size for EV batteries. Manufacturers are battling to find the balance between cars with enough range for drivers not to worry about running out of charge, while keeping weight and bulk down.
It’s something of an impossible problem, particularly while we’re still in the early stages of electric cars being accepted into the mainstream. People need the comfort blanket of a big range figure when they start driving an EV, until they get the experience to know that the range isn’t suddenly going to plunge and strand them, and until they can trust the public charging network.
But there are now many cars with an official range of well over 300 miles, and while that figure will rise as efficiency improves, hopefully the race to fit bigger batteries will peak at around 100kW, before the issue of charging speed becomes the focus.
Bentley CEO Dr Frank-Steffen Walliser likened it to fuel tanks, saying there’s no demand for 200-litre tanks that can go 2,000 miles between fill-ups – you reach a point where the weight, packaging and cost are counter-productive.
And even when we think about charging time, Dr Walliser said that it’s maybe not necessary for recharging to match how long it takes to fill a car with petrol.
