News
News
December 1, 2014
We’ve been hearing a lot about fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) lately, thanks in large part to Toyota and its Mirai. But how does a FCEV really compare to a battery-electric vehicle (BEV) like the Tesla or a LEAF?  I wanted to look at the economics between FCEVs and BEVs, and then […]
November 26, 2014
The US Advanced Battery Consortium (USABC) has awarded $2.68 million to San Diego-based Maxwell Technologies for the development of a hybrid energy storage system for automotive stop-start applications. The competitively bid contract award is co-funded by the DOE. The 19-month program will focus on the technological and economic feasibility of adapting […]
November 26, 2014
The US Department of Defense has awarded EaglePicher, a company with a long history in the defense industry, $22 million in funding for Phase II of the Lithium-Ion Battery for Military Applications (LIMA) project. The program’s goal is to assure the affordable production of items deemed essential for national defense. […]
November 18, 2014
Daimler subsidiary Li-Tec will stop producing Li-ion battery cells in December, closing the only German factory currently producing cells for EVs. “Our cells are very good, but at current production figures far too expensive,†Daimler Manager Harald Kröger told Der Spiegel. “We have realized that a car manufacturer does not […]
November 8, 2014
A team from Delft University in The Netherlands and the University of Waterloo in Canada has used operando X-ray diffraction to show that oxidation of electrochemically-generated Li2O2 in high energy density Li-air batteries occurs in two stages, but in only one step for commercial (crystalline) Li2O2. This discovery reveals a […]
October 3, 2014
It’s a solar cell! No… it’s a rechargeable lithium-air battery! No… wait… it’s both: It’s the world’s first all-in-one solar battery! The new device, developed by Ohio State University, is essentially an air-breathing lithium battery that recharges via a built-in solar cell. This is significant, because one of the biggest problems […]
March 26, 2014
It has been confirmed that Volkswagen is working on a powerful new battery for its EV fleet. Speaking at the Geneva Motor Show, Dr. Heinz-Jakob Neusser said that “an 80kWh unit is under development using our own technology. It would provide between three and four times the battery power in a given package.†[…]
March 19, 2014
Research presented at the meeting of the America Chemical Society suggests that the current dominant technology for electric vehicles, lithium-ion, could be surpassed by batteries employing air as the cathode. At present most electric vehicles on the market today have a range less than 200km on a single charge. To […]
November 13, 2013
Lithium-air batteries have become a hot research area in recent years: They hold the promise of drastically increasing power per battery weight, which could lead, for example, to electric cars with a much greater driving range. But bringing that promise to reality has faced a number of challenges, including the […]
April 20, 2012
As part of its Battery 500 project — an initiative started by IBM in 2009 to produce a battery capable of powering a car for 500 miles — Big Blue has successfully demonstrated a light-weight, ultra-high-density, lithium-air battery. In IBM’s lithium-air battery, oxygen is reacted with lithium to create lithium […]