Tesla cars
What makes Tesla battery technology so advanced?
To answer this, understanding how general batteries work will be important. In 1799, Scientist Alessandro Volta invented the first battery (Bhatt, n.d.). A battery can be made of one or more cells. Each cell is made up of an anode and cathode, separated by an electrolyte. The main purpose of a battery is to produce a current (flow of electrons) to power certain appliances, in this case, an electric car. For this to happen you need somewhere for electrons to flow from and somewhere for them to flow to. Coincidentally, this occurs in a cell between one electrode (anode) to the other electrode (cathode).
Figure 4- Zinc and silver battery (Bhatt, n.d.)
In his first battery, Volta used zinc for the anode and silver for the cathode. The cells, which were made of zinc and silver separated by salty paper, were stacked on top of each other and connected with a wire as shown in figure 4. To produce the electron flow shown in figure 4, first the anode must react with the electrolyte to produce electrons which then collect at the anode. Meanwhile, the cathode also has a reaction with the electrolyte that allows electrons to be absorbed by it. This
makes the anode become negatively charged and the cathode positively charged which causes there to be a potential difference between the two sides. Once this occurs, a current can flow out of the anode and into the cathode with the aid of a connecting wire. This is how a basic battery works and even to this day, the general concept stays the same. However, the technology has developed and what all electric cars currently use are lithium-ion batteries. Lithium-ion batteries are better because, compared to zinc, lithium has the highest tendency to give up electrons. This means that pure lithium is an extremely reactive metal, but when part of a metal oxide it is quite stable. Using this idea, a lithium-ion battery, in short separates lithium atoms from its metal oxide and stores them in the anode of graphite while charging. Then, when the cell is in use, the lithium ions are guided back to the metal oxide through the electrolyte and the electrons are brough back through an external circuit.
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