TECH: TOPICS
Batteries are to electric cars what fuel tanks are to petrol-powered vehicles, so why are batteries the focus of so much engineering? Aren't they all the same anyway? They're just ‘tanks’ of electrical energy, right? The principles of how a battery works are certainly more or less a standard regardless of design, though it's worth revisiting our knowledge of the field before we look at how Porsche has used battery power to date, as well as how it will do in the future.
A battery is an electrochemical device converting stored chemical energy into electrical energy. The principles governing its operation were discovered over two thousand years ago, but in 1800, Italian physicist and chemist, Alessandro Volta, invented the first true battery, which he named the Voltaic Pile. This device was made up of alternating discs of copper and zinc, separated by pieces of cardboard soaked in saltwater.
When the two ends were connected by a wire, a steady flow of electricity was produced. The Voltaic Pile was a significant breakthrough in battery technology and established the principle of voltaic cells, which continue to be used in today's batteries.
We should define a few core words here. First up, most of us never stop to think about what electricity actually is. It's not magic. It is, in fact, a type of energy producedare negatively charged subatomic particles found in all atoms.
