As electric vehicles rely heavily on the storage of electricity to power them, battery technology has therefore advanced over the recent years from large research and development from companies to provide longer lasting, faster recharging batteries which are safe for commercial use in electric vehicles.

The most current issue with electric vehicles at the moment is range, consumers want a 400km+ range, even though the average distance each car travels per day is only 45kms. As current petrol vehicles achieve this type of range, it will be hard to try and get consumers to purchase a car which travels less distance per refuel/recharge. With the electric vehicles that have been recently sold, including the General Motors EV1 which had a range of about 250kms, the Toyota Rav4 EV with a 12 range of 140km and the Nissan Altra EV which had a range of 193km. As you can see they are a step under the consumers demands of 400km per charge.

There are many types of battery technologies which are used for electric vehicles, with some of the most promising being NiMH and Lithium Ion. Although there are some new technologies some companies have developed in the past couple of years which will revolutionise electric vehicles and quickly advance them as highly competitive vehicles in the automotive market.

The American company AltairNano have developed a battery technology called NanoSafe which is slightly similar to a regular Lithium Ion battery. This new technology allows a faster recharge time, greater stability, a longer lifecyle (already tested up to 25,000 cycles) and a higher power density over current Lithium Ion batteries.