This has the potential to make electric vehicles much more environmentally friendly and sustainable.
Artificial intelligence was recently used to design a surprising new type of battery that would require substantially less lithium – a rare metal – to achieve the same energy storage results.
Lithium mining is terrible for the environment and drives up the cost of vehicle batteries.
By reducing the need for lithium – as could be the case if the battery design created by artificial intelligence proves feasible – electric vehicles and devices have the potential to be cheaper, last longer on a single charge, and reduce the burden on the environment from mining the rare metal in the first place.
The design the AI was able to develop would reduce the need for lithium in batteries by 70 percent in order to achieve the same amount of available energy storage.
Artificial intelligence could have made a massive difference in the future of battery storage.
The world’s dependence on lithium-ion batteries is already substantial, when taking into consideration the fact that they power some of the devices people use most every day, such as phones, tablets, laptops, and other devices. That said, now that the popularity of electric cars has also exploded, the demand for the precious metal has only taken off alongside the trend.
That said, though the need for lithium has skyrocketed, this hasn’t eliminated the profound environmental and ethical concerns linked with mining it. This has made the need for alternatives – or at least ways to reduce the use of lithium – a high priority in many industries.
It also helps to explain why AI was assigned the task of offering a solution to this challenge. Now that an option has been made available, there remain other steps before it could be implemented into mainstream use. Still, if it proves a viable option, the timing of its development is a strong one, as the need for energy storage options has never been higher, nor has the requirement for greener alternatives to what already exists.
The design created by artificial intelligence is simplistic, using a new combination of materials to enhance the efficiency of energy storage, instead of relying exclusively on conventional lithium-based anodes.
