News

  SK Innovation, a unit of SK Group, is a small fish in a sea of Asian battery suppliers like Panasonic, Samsung and LG, but its automotive customer base is growing, and it is rapidly ramping up production. Since the Korean firm opened its battery plant in Seosan in 2012, […]

Rare earth elements, prized for their magnetic properties, are used in a wide range of modern technology, including advanced electric motors. Unfortunately, they are expensive, and some are available only from problematic parts of the world. To make it easier to recover and recycle rare earth minerals, the DOE’s Critical […]

The Volkswagen Group has nominated 44 of its suppliers to collaborate on a new strategic level under the Future Automotive Supply Tracks (FAST) initiative. One of the first batch of preferred suppliers is LG Electronics, which provides high-voltage batteries for the Group’s various plug-in vehicles. Volkswagen launched the FAST program […]

Utilizing battery cells from LG Chem as well as Samsung SDI, Audi has announced that it is planning to produce a fully electric SUV with 311 miles (500 kilometers) of range. If that wasn’t enough to get you sitting up much straighter in your chair, Audi says that it will […]

Skeleton Technologies’ new ultracapacitor-based 24 V Engine Start Module (SkelStart ESM) is designed to ensure trouble-free engine starting in any conditions. Batteries are a major headache in the trucking industry, particularly in cold climates. Long-haul drivers often leave engines idling for long periods to keep batteries charged. Starting failures occur […]

3M and LG Chem have formed a patent license agreement to allow the Korean battery-maker to use 3M’s formulation of nickel manganese cobalt oxide (NMC) cathode materials in lithium-ion batteries. NMC, valued for its balance of power, energy, thermal stability and low cost, has been the subject of some rivalry […]

Arkema, a global chemical company, and SCE France, a subsidiary of Canadian electricity producer Hydro-Québec, plan to create a joint laboratory that will focus on developing a new generation of materials for the manufacture of lithium-ion batteries, in particular new electrolytes (solvents, lithium salts) and conduction agents (carbon nanotubes, conductive […]

Critics of electric vehicles like to argue that they’re really not greener than gas-powered cars: those tailpipe emissions just move to the source of electricity (which, in the US, is often coal or natural gas), and that electric vehicle battery will eventually require disposal. The first argument doesn’t take into […]

Electric car enthusiasts are pretty quick to drop the term “vaporware” these days… because there’s a lot of vaporware in this market. Heck, there’s a lot of vaporware in the car market in general. So, when Faraday Future* unveiled plans this week to build high-performance electric cars, it decided to jump straight […]

Energy storage startup BioSolar (OTCQB: BSRC) will extend a sponsored research program at the University of California, Santa Barbara to further develop its “super battery technology.” The extension funds the research program until June 2016. BioSolar’s baby is a novel polymer cathode that leverages fast redox-reaction properties, rather than conventional […]

With Tesla’s Gigafactory apparently now set to end up far larger than was originally reported, others in the race towards dominance of the lithium-ion battery industry are apparently unwilling to keep silent either, based on recent comments from the head of Bosch Japan. Bosch and its partner GS Yuasa are […]

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has recommended battery second use (B2U) as a way to offset the cost of electric vehicles and improve electricity grid stability. What is B2U? Battery second use is just another term for battery repurposing. NREL conducted a study on the viability of reusing discarded […]