Energy Storage System Technology Challenges facing Strong Hybrid, Plug-in and Battery Electric Vehicles

Energy storage systems have been the bane of automotive products since the time of Thomas Edison and his time and investment spent in nickel-iron as the technology thought to be superior to lead-acid batteries of his day. Now, over a century later, the automotive industry is still caught up in this catch 22 situation and is looking at lithium-ion as the technology considered superior to nickel-metal-hydride and certainly of lead-acid. In all this time there hasn't been an electrochemical technology sufficiently superior to completely replace the existing solution, nor is there likely to be if history teaches us anything. In this paper the proposition is made that it is time the industry considers combination technologies, in particular, those combinations of electrochemical storage that compliment each other through the incorporation of our era's superiority in power electronics. With power electronics it is now possible to truly decouple the vehicle application requirements for energy and power and to optimize the energy storage system accordingly and with advanced energy management systems. This paper discusses the challenges facing designers and manufactures of hybrid and electric vehicles and why a power electronic enabled combination of existing electrochemical storage mediums does present a viable value proposition.