New technology could dramatically increase the range of electric vehicles.

New research at the University of Waterloo could lead to the development of batteries that triple the range of electric vehicles.

The breakthrough involves the use of negative electrodes made of lithium metal, a material with the potential to dramatically increase battery storage capacity.

“This will mean cheap, safe, long-lasting batteries that give people much more range in their electric vehicles,” said Quanquan Pang, who led the research while he was a PhD candidate at Waterloo.

The increased storage capacity, or energy density, could boost the distance electric vehicles are able to travel on a single charge, from about 200 kilometres to 600 kilometres.

A paper on the research was published today in the journal Joule.