Although Italians look inclined to transition from endothermic to electric engines, recently, there has been a slowdown in the registration of electric cars in Italy.
What mainly deters the buyer are the expense still defined as “elitist” in buying a car, and the ongoing quest regarding the battery life duration.
The initial plausible fear related to the innovation factor limiting the “electric question” to a few only, as of today this lacks of solid foundations, also, given *the spread* of the charging stations among the main Italian urban areas.

This does not exclude that electric cars can be improved still.
As a matter of fact, battery autonomy has been a hot topic lately, particularly, how it could be improved, making these vehicles more efficient and less expensive.
The battery market is gaining momentum and battery autonomy is playing a key role; however, “dead space” that does not convey energy is still an issue.
According to electrochemist Euan McTurk of “Plug Life Consulting” the battery should be made of 100 percent active material: every part of the battery pack should store energy,” which, at the moment would mean a large battery size, which would then call for an even heavier structure to support it.

Indeed, battery weight as well as total car weight represent the hardest challenges for a designer.
Batteries typically use cell modules that are linked together and inserted in packs. “Standard modules may fit well inside some packs, yet they leave large areas of ‘idle’ space in others. Idle space means dead weight.” Says Richie Frost, founder and CEO of Sprint Power, an electric vehicle technology company.

The first companies working on maximizing battery efficiency are Tesla and some Chinese companies such as Byd and Catl.
According to Tesla, developing a kind of glue that acts as a fire-retardant material could lead to actually glue the entire battery pack, hence getting rid of 370 parts of the vehicle that are currently used to support the battery pack within the vehicle. This advancement would result in a 10 percent reduction in overall weight and a 7 percent decrease in battery consumption; thus, resulting in higher range.

From Shenzen, Byd is developing cell-to-pack technology, i.e., cells are inserted directly into the pack rather than being assembled into modules first. This maximizes the number of cells that can be placed in the battery pack/support. A lithium iron phosphate (Lfp) battery has also been developed; it features better chemical stability and it has lower production costs. However, such batteries entail lower energy density, which could be improved by a larger number of cells per pack.

Catl is the world’s leading manufacturer of batteries for electric vehicles, boasting a 33 percent market share and offering cell-to-chassis technology: battery, chassis, and underbody of electric vehicles, which are combined into a single structural power-unit. By fitting more cells inside each individual vehicle, the autonomy/mileage/range would improve. This would enable a mileage of up to 1,000 km on a single charge, hence improving surpassing the current technology by about 40 percent.

However, this study is still in its development phase, and it may take a few years more to manufacture such autonomous vehicles. Yet there are some companies who think they could start developing cell-to-chassis technology in a near future.
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