News

June 29, 2015

Researchers Add Compounds to Electrolyte to Prevent Dendrite Growth

Those doggone dendrites are the bane of battery boffins working on otherwise promising lithium metal anodes. Now a group of researchers from SLAC, Stanford and MIT have discovered that adding lithium polysulfide and lithium nitrate to an ether-based electrolyte can prevent dendrite growth and minimize electrolyte decomposition. Professor Yi Cui, […]
June 24, 2015

Swiss and Finnish Firms Collaborate to Build Drivetrain for Battery-Electric Ferry, City Buses

Swiss battery manufacturer Leclanché (named for the inventor of the dry cell battery) and Finnish electric drivetrain specialist Visedo have partnered to deliver a powertrain for an electric ferryboat that will be built by Danish shipbuilder Søby Shipyard and put into service in June 2017 between the mainland and Ærø […]
June 24, 2015

5 Lithium-Ion Battery Startup Companies

Energy storage has been a hot topic lately. While there are many forms of energy storage, the one we might be most familiar with is lithium-ion battery technology. All those smartphones you see around wouldn’t be here were it not for lithium-ion batteries. Perhaps the most visible user of lithium-ion […]
June 23, 2015

24M Introduces Semisolid Lithium-Ion Cell Claiming Half the Cost of Current Technology

Startup 24M has emerged from stealth mode to introduce its semisolid lithium-ion cell, which the company claims will deliver improved performance at half the cost of current Li-ion batteries. “The lithium-ion battery is a brilliant, enabling technology, but its economics are flawed. It’s prohibitively expensive; it’s cumbersome and inefficient to […]
June 23, 2015

Sion Power to Provide Lithium-Sulfur Batteries for Airbus High-Altitude Aircraft

Sion Power Corporation has signed a three-year agreement to supply its proprietary lithium-sulfur batteries for use in Airbus Defence and Space’s Zephyr High Altitude Pseudo-Satellite (HAPS) aircraft. The HAPS is an aircraft that stays aloft for long periods of time, allowing it to perform many of the functions of a […]
June 21, 2015

Tesla Hires Prominent Battery Researcher Jeff Dahn

Better and cheaper batteries will be one of the key enabling technologies for the clean, distributed energy system of the future. More specifically, they are a critical component of Tesla’s master plan to produce an affordable mass-market EV. The Seers of Silicon Valley added a big name to their stable […]
June 19, 2015

Old Nissan LEAF Batteries Will Store Electricity For Businesses

It is the very nature of a battery that, over time, the capacity to store electricity begins to degrade. After an electric vehicle battery has lost about 30% of its total capacity, it’s generally deemed unfit for continued use in a car and is replaced. But those batteries aren’t just […]
June 19, 2015

Lux Research: China’s Energy Storage Market to Quadruple by 2025

As the air in some Chinese cities approaches the consistency of egg-drop soup, the country’s government is pushing electrified vehicles and renewable energy in a big way, and this is driving huge growth in the energy storage market, which will be worth $8.7 billion in 2025, more than four times […]
June 17, 2015

Nissan, GM and Toyota Repurpose Used EV Batteries for Stationary Storage

Tesla may have made it trendy, but the California company is far from the only automaker exploring the commercial energy storage market, which is expected to grow from $200 million in 2012 to $19 billion in 2017, according to research firm IHS CERA. Nissan has joined forces with Green Charge […]
June 17, 2015

PowerGenix Demonstrates the Benefits of Nickel-Zinc Batteries for Stop-Start and Auxiliary Applications

PowerGenix, a supplier of automotive nickel-zinc (NiZn) batteries, has completed a product evaluation test plan with the Institute of Automotive Technologies Dresden (IAD). IAD evaluated the capabilities of NiZn batteries used as a 12 V auxiliary power unit for plug-in vehicles, or as a 12 V starter battery for stop-start […]
June 16, 2015

Toyota Research Team Reports Critical Advance in Electrolytes for Magnesium Batteries

Still looking for a replacement for lithium? How about magnesium? It’s divalent, so it can displace double the charge per ion (i.e., Mg2+ rather than Li+). It’s much more abundant than lithium, and more stable. However, researchers investigating Mg-ion batteries have run into several limitations, including anode/electrolyte incompatibility. Now a […]
June 15, 2015

Chinese Battery-Maker Orders Separion Ceramic Composite Separators From Electrovaya

Canadian manufacturer Electrovaya has announced a major order for its Separion ceramic composite separators from an unnamed Chinese battery company. Electrovaya acquired the Separion intellectual property from a company called Evonik in April. According to Electrovaya, most cells made with a graphite anode and a Nickel Manganese Cobalt (NMC) cathode […]