Accelerated aging of Lithium-ion batteries based on electric vehicle mission profile

Electric vehicles (EVs) represent one of the solutions for reducing the carbon emissions worldwide. Even though EVs have recently gained more and more popularity, their adoption at a large scale is mainly prevented by several factors, such as range anxiety and battery degradation. The range of an EV is mainly limited by the energy density and specific energy of the battery, while the battery degradation is determined by the driving manner (i.e., the mission profile) to which the EV is subjected to. In this paper we analyze the EV-battery degradation, in terms of both capacity fade and internal resistance increase (power decrease), by performing laboratory accelerated ageing tests for a period of eleven months. To perform this analysis, we used a standardized driving cycle — the Worldwide harmonized Light vehicles Test Cycle (WLTC) and a real-life temperature profile, characteristic to a European city. Furthermore, the study is performed for a Lithium-ion battery chemistry, which is nowadays very popular for EVs, the nickel manganese cobalt oxide-chemistry.