Your Electric Car uses Lithium-Ion Polymer batteries to power its momentum. Lithium batteries or “Li-ion” don’t just power your electric car. It’s the same technology that powers your cell phone, your laptop, and many other household electronics.
Okay cool, but how do they work?
Not a whole lot different than other batteries. They just happen to be better at it than the other types that you grew up with.
A Lithium-Ion battery is built on its core components. An anode, a cathode, a separator, and an electrolyte. The electrolyte carries positively charged electrons from the anode through the separator to the cathode. The movement of these electrons causes free electrons which collect on the positive tab of the battery.
That power would then flow through your device, be it a car, cell phone, etc back to the negative terminal on the battery.
When the battery is providing an electric current, the anode releases lithium ions to the cathode, generating a flow of electrons from one side to the other. When charging the battery, the opposite happens: Lithium ions are released by the cathode and flow towards the anode and stored.
What makes Lithium Batteries better is that Li-ion batteries are able to be recharged hundreds of times with minimal degradation. They tend to have a higher energy density, voltage capacity, and lower self-discharge rate than other rechargeable batteries.
