Inspiration
The idea came to me from a conversation with my partner, who is a battery researcher at an automotive company. When he talks about his work, I hear battery jargon without really understanding much of it. So I thought of an app that helps people like me, with no technical background in Electric Vehicles (EVs), understand and explore what makes an EV battery work and how it performs under different conditions.
It takes into consideration:
- The battery liquid (electrolyte): how tightly it grips lithium, computed with a quantum algorithm. A tighter grip slows down charging.
- How much liquid is in the battery: less saves weight, but slows charging and shortens the battery's life.
- Electrode layer thickness: thick layers store more energy (more range); thin layers let lithium move faster (quicker charging).
- Battery size: bigger means more range, but also more weight and cost.
- Outside temperature: Michigan winters are cold and affect EV battery performance. Cold slows the chemistry inside the battery, makes the air denser, and uses energy to heat the cabin, so winter range drops.
I wanted a way to explore these factors myself: to move a slider, see what changes, and finally understand why. While building it, I folded in a few of my partner's comments: that how materials are engineered together into a cell matters as much as the materials themselves, and that some key material properties are very hard to measure in a lab. That second point is where quantum computing comes in. EVolt Lab uses a quantum algorithm as a "virtual experiment" to estimate one of those hard-to-measure properties, then feeds it into the battery model.
What it does
EVolt Lab is a virtual EV battery lab for anyone. You design a battery and simulate how it could ideally perform. Real-world batteries are affected by many more factors (manufacturing, aging, driving habits, and more), so the results show what's possible and how each choice trades off against the others, not an exact guarantee.
- You choose: the battery liquid, how much liquid, the electrode layer thickness, the battery size, and the outside temperature (it starts from live weather in Ypsilanti, MI).
- You see: a car-style instrument cluster with simulated range, 10–80% fast-charge time and charging power, plus pack weight, cost, durability and an overall EVolt Score. A "What this means" line explains the biggest effect in one sentence.
- Quantum Lab: for each battery liquid, a quantum algorithm computes how tightly it grips lithium. The tighter the grip, the harder it is for lithium to break free while charging, and that matters even more in the cold. The page shows the algorithm converging, the "grip curves", and what the qubits actually measured.
- Volt, your voice assistant (ElevenLabs): tap the glowing button and talk or type. Volt explains every number in plain words, answers questions out loud, and can also change and optimize your build. Ask "make this battery winter-ready," and it adjusts the design, then tells you what it changed and why. The mic only listens while you hold the button, so it works in a noisy room.
- The Garage: log in, save your build, and see how it ranks on a public leaderboard of everyone's batteries. Every build has a share link, and there's a QR code to try it yourself.
