Plugged In: A Lasagna-Lover’s Information to EV Battery Cell Anatomy

Final Up to date on: twenty seventh June 2025, 11:07 pm

By Mandira Ganti, intern, Tech Communications

They are saying meals is gasoline, which seems to be an ideal metaphor for understanding how electrical car batteries work — they’re constructed like lasagna.

Creating the right lasagna will be daunting, but it surely’s straightforward to eat (plus, it’s tasty!). Constructing a high-performance EV battery cell takes precision and planning, however understanding the layers inside is surprisingly easy. Each a battery cell and a lasagna include a couple of important layers, every with a definite function.

Let’s dig in.

If you think about an EV battery, you may image the big, rectangular unit put in beneath the ground in most electrical autos. That’s really the battery pack — the construction that homes many particular person batteries. Consider the battery pack like an industrial-sized oven holding a number of pans of lasagna. Our present EV battery packs include not less than 10 modules — consider these because the lasagna pans. In our present battery design, every module holds 24 battery cells, technically known as pouch kind issue cells — our 24 servings of lasagna. So although it appears to be like like one stable system, it’s actually a whole bunch of coordinated elements working collectively.

And it’s inside these particular person battery cells the place a few of right this moment’s most cutting-edge improvements occur.

Now, let’s think about opening a one-serving container of lasagna. That container is just like the cell casing that protects one serving of battery energy. Open the casing and also you’ll discover a stack of electrodes — consider this as your slice of lasagna (although in most GM EV batteries, the stack could be flipped on its facet). Every battery cell has a pair of electrodes: a positively charged cathode and a negatively charged anode.

The electrodes are skinny sheets of metallic foil often called present collectors, aluminum for the cathode and copper for the anode, coated with totally different chemical “elements.” Consider the cathode because the wealthy, flavorful sauce layer, whereas the anode is just like the creamy ricotta layer — each important, however distinct elements of the recipe.

The important thing to good lasagna is retaining the ricotta and sauce from mixing right into a gooey mess. In a lasagna, pasta sheets hold the layers distinct, whereas in a battery cell, a skinny polymer separator retains the cathode and anode supplies aside. These three layers (cathode, separator, and anode) repeat a number of instances to create a stack of roughly 20 layers. This construction is the place the chemical reactions happen, storing the vitality that powers an EV.

With out diving too deep simply now, it’s vital to grasp some battery fundamentals to actually grasp the anatomy of a battery cell.

To create electrical present, ions and electrons want to maneuver between the electrodes by way of two paths.

Lithium ions journey from the anode, by way of the separator to the cathode contained in the cell. The battery cell is full of a gel-like substance known as electrolyte which helps the ions go by way of the separator. The electrolyte is just like the water contained in the cooked sheets of pasta that get layered into the lasagna — with out the moisture from cooking, the pasta sheets could be too stiff, and the flavors (or on this case, ions) couldn’t circulate between layers.

In the meantime, electrons take an out of doors route, beginning on the anode, touring by way of the car’s electrical techniques, and returning to the cathode. The electrons enter and exit the cell by way of terminals, delivering electrical energy on the way in which to all of the electrically-powered gadgets within the car (the electrical motor, the stereo, the air-con, and so on.). This journey strikes the facility out of the battery into the automotive — the identical approach your fork delivers meals out of your plate to your mouth, then goes again for the subsequent chew.

Electrons and ions repeat this journey from the cathode to the anode 1000’s of instances per second, but it surely’s nonetheless all finished with a couple of principal elements:

1. The cell casing
2. Cathode sheets (aluminum present collector + chemical coating)
3. Anode sheets (copper present collector + chemical coating)
4. Separator sheets
5. The cathode terminal
6. The anode terminal
7. The electrolyte

Developments are consistently taking place in EV battery tech, however these seven elementary elements are at all times within the combine. When new EV battery know-how is introduced, it often means engineers have fine-tuned certainly one of these elements, like a high chef including a secret ingredient to enhance their lasagna recipe. And since there are a whole bunch of battery cells in every electrical car, small adjustments can ship vital leaps in efficiency, vary, or value.

So hold your eyes on the recipe. We’ll be again quickly to clarify how electrification know-how works, utilizing on a regular basis ideas to make them straightforward to grasp.

Article from GM.