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This EV Can Go 1,000 Miles on New Aluminum-Air Batteries

Petrol goes down, taxes and regulations go up, but this gives birth to a lot of new alternative ways of powering our cars. If those incredible carbon-carbon batteries didn’t mess up your brain, check out these aluminum-air ones that can power a small car for more miles than a full tank of gasoline in an economic car.
Citroen C1 EV with aluminum-air batteries 1 photo
Photo: screenshot from Youtube
The technology has been developed by battery developer Phinergy and metal manufacturer Alcoa. They recently showed the new technology on a Citroen C1 donor car at Circuit Gilles Villenueve in Montreal.

No combustion engine can be found in this little C1, only an electric motor, lithium-ion and aluminum-air batteries, which gives the car an autonomy of around 1,ooo miles (1,600 km).

Wonder how it works? Well, the aluminum anode, the oxygen from the air used as cathode and the water used as electrolyte are combining to create electricity to power the vehicle. A secondary product is generated, called aluminum hydroxide, which is recycled to create more aluminum.

How do you charge it then? Well, you can try the old fashioned way or simply replace some modular aluminum cartridges and restart the electricity-making process.

This basically transforms the aluminum-air “battery” into an emission free range extender. So you can recharge you battery in a green way using another battery which is also green... Inception much?

Sounds a bit complicated and, lets get serious now, aluminum is not the most abundant easiest to come by element on this planet. So even if the system finds its way on to production cars at some point, it might not be as widespread as standard EVs with upgraded carbon-carbon batteries for example.

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