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An electrical battery consists of one or more electrochemical cells, which are able to convert the chemical energy stored in the battery into electrical energy. The cell was developed by Alessandro Volta, in 1800. Today, the battery is a common power source for households, industries and toys.

Batteries may be used once and discarded, or recharged for years as in standby power applications. Miniature cells are used to power devices such as wristwatches and portable electronic devices; larger batteries provide standby power for telephone exchanges or computer data centers, for cars and other vehicles, incuding electric cars.

The 2006/66/EC European Directive (see the Summary of EU waste Legislation on Batteries and Accumulators) aims at minimising the negative impacts of batteries and accumulators on the environment. The Directive introduces measures to prohibit the marketing of some batteries containing hazardous substances. The Directive contains measures for establishing schemes aiming at high level of collection and recycling of batteries with quantified collection and recycling targets.

BEVs store electricity in batteries and draw power from the batteries to run an electric motor that drives the vehicle. So long as the ultimat electricity source is clean, the BEV system can reduce emissions significantly compared with an internal combustion engine vehicle (ICEV) run on a liquid fuel. Indeed, BEVs using WWS power would be completely zero-emission vehicles. Moreover, BEVs get about 5 times more work (in miles of travel) per unit of input energy than do ICEVs (mi/kWh-outlet versus mi/kWh-gasoline). BEVs have existed for decades in small levels of production, and today most major automobile companies are developing BEVs. The latest generation of vehicles uses lithium-ion batteries, which do not use the toxic chemicals associated with lead-acid or the nickel-cadmium batteries (1).

Vehicles using both electric motors and internal combustion engines are examples of hybrid electric vehicles, and are not considered pure (or all) EVs because they operate in a charge-sustaining mode.

• Regular hybrid electric vehicles cannot be externally charged.
• Hybrid vehicles with batteries that can be charged externally to displace some or all of their internal combustion engine power and gasoline fuel are called plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV), and are BEVs during their charge-depleting mode.

All-electric and plug-in hybrids are off-vehicle charge capable. (“OVCC” or pluginable), which means their batteries can be charged from an off-vehicle electric energy source that cannot be connected or coupled to the vehicle while the vehicle is being driven (2)

Sources:

(1) Mark Z. Jacobson and Mark A. Delucchi: Evaluating the Feasibility of a Large-Scale Wind, Water, and Sun Energy Infrastructure

(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_electric_vehicle