Volkswagen has been investing heavily in battery research and development to support its plans to expand electric vehicle production from next year to date, and their efforts so far have focused on the actual production of batteries and on the rare raw materials such as cobalt, but they are also exploring more future-oriented The choice to improve the battery's technological level.
Today, Volkswagen announced a partnership with Google to use quantum computers to improve the future of electric vehicle batteries and other transportation, such as traffic optimization and new machine learning processes.
Quantum computing is still in its infancy, but Google is already leading the field in this field and earlier this year AI researchers were allowed access to quantum computers to drive the development of applications.
It is believed that artificial intelligence and quantum computing may solve material science problems and help to create new materials to optimize existing technologies such as batteries.
Earlier this year, Toyota announced a similar plan to develop the next generation of EV batteries.
It now appears that the public is also trying to do this by establishing a new partnership with Google.
Martin Hofmann, Volkswagen's chief information officer, rates the partnership as follows: "Quantum computing has opened the door to new dimensions that mark the way in which humans are rapidly tracking key issues for the future. Once Quantum With the commercialization of computing, we want to be the first to use the technology in business processes and we've taken an important step toward that goal by working with Google. "
The company said it will focus its research on 'practical applications' and experts from the San Francisco-based mass information technology center (IT Lab) and Munich will 'work with Google experts to develop algorithms, simulations and optimization models'.
Hartmut Neven, director of Google's Quantum Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, commented: 'The general public has accumulated a wealth of expertise in solving major engineering problems in the real world and can work together in quantum computing It is an honor for us to promote the transformation of the automotive industry. '
Speaking of battery issues, Volkswagen experts plan to take advantage of the opportunity to work with Google to "simulate and optimize the structure of high-performance batteries for electric vehicles and other materials."
Currently, lithium-ion batteries dominate the electric vehicle industry and can be produced from different types of chemicals. There is room for improvement in lithium-ion technology, but researchers are also looking for other cell technologies such as metal-air cells, solid-state cells Or graphene batteries, eventually replacing lithium metal.