Performance evaluation of lithium polymer batteries for use in electric vehicles

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the performance of 100 A-h lithium polymer batteries to determine their suitability for use in battery powered electric vehicles (BPEVs). The performance includes: battery cell capacity evaluation, battery efficiency, temperature effects on the performance of the batteries, self discharge, fast chargeability, and realistic load test. These are important factors that determine this batterypsilas suitability for BPEVs. The characteristics are conducted at four different temperatures to study the effect of seasonal changes in temperature. The tests show that the lithium batteries performed well during the evaluation at 0, +20, and +40 Degree Celsius (degC). Also it shows that the batteries can be fast charged. The battery voltage and temperature stayed with the limits during the realistic load test. More over the batteries exhibited very high energy efficiency and low self discharge rate.