Self-heating battery may help electric cars beat winter woes

Scientists have developed an all-climate lithium-ion battery that heats itself in sub-zero temperatures and may help electric vehicles function smoothly in winters.  Conventional batteries at below freezing temperatures suffer severe power loss, which leads to slow charging in cold weather, restricted regenerative breaking and reduction of vehicle cruise range by as much as 40 per cent, researchers said.  These problems require larger and more expensive battery packs to compensate for the cold sapping of energy.  “It is a long standing problem that batteries do not perform well at subzero temperatures,” said Chao-Yang Wang from Pennsylvania State University in US.
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