Electrovaya’s new battery technology demonstrates improved cycle life at third party test lab

Figure 3: Prototype pouch cell featuring Electrovaya’s solid state hybrid battery technology

TORONTO — Electrovaya Inc., a lithium-ion battery technology and manufacturing company, announces that its batteries reportedly demonstrated industry-leading cycle life in third-party testing.

The batteries completed more than 9,000 charge/discharge cycles using aggressive vehicle duty cycles in cell testing at DNV’s BEST Test Center battery labs in Rochester, NY, while retaining approximately 87% of their initial capacity. This extrapolates to about 14,000 projected cycles until cells reach 80% of their initial capacity. The testing has been ongoing on multiple large format 44Ah cells at a variety of charge/discharge rates and temperatures for more than three years.

“This long-term testing at DNV clearly demonstrates the significant advantages of Electrovaya’s Infinity Battery Technology with respect to cycle life and longevity, even under heavy-duty conditions. In fact, the projection to more than 14,000 cycles demonstrates a performance advantage of three to five times the cycle life of a typical lithium-ion battery,” said Dr. Elmira Memarzadeh, Director of Engineering Programs at Electrovaya. “This performance, when viewed through a typical passenger car duty cycle, can be approximated to more than 3 million miles before reaching end of life, if we assume an electric vehicle has a range of 250 miles per charge.”

Key highlights from the test results include:

• Capacity Retention: Following continuous testing, cells have completed more than 9,000 cycles with approximately 87% capacity retention. Testing has been completed at a variety of temperatures and charge/discharge rates.
• Projected Cycle Life: Extrapolates to about 14,000 projected cycles using an aggressive vehicle duty cycle to 80% of the initial battery capacity.
• High-Rate Charge and Discharge Rates: Testing demonstrates no unfavourable sensitivity to charge rates within the range tested (0.5-2C Rate) at room temperature. A 2C rate would be equivalent to a battery completely charged or discharged in 30 minutes. This demonstrates that the Infinity Battery Technology can handle very high charge rates with no loss in performance, a key requirement for heavy duty applications.

“For typical material handling, electric bus and energy storage applications, demands on batteries often exceed one cycle per day, thereby making cycle life a key selection criteria. Electrovaya’s technology provides a significantly better life cycle cost for these intensive-use, mission-critical applications. Accordingly, our batteries also provide a significantly lower cost of ownership, even with higher list prices,” said Dr. Raj DasGupta, CEO of Electrovaya.