News

Lithium is a key component of lithium-ion batteries and lithium-ion batteries are a key component of the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy and electric cars. But until now, it has been in relatively short supply, sparking fierce competition among mining companies. It is one of the most abundant […]

Consumer electronics have traditionally driven the demand for energy storage devices, but transportation and stationary applications will soon become the largest storage markets, according to Lux Research. By 2025 the energy storage market will top $100 billion, with applications in transportation alone reaching $69 billion, Lux forecasts. The highest growth […]

The Battery500 consortium, led by the DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), intends to build a battery pack with a specific energy of 500 Wh/kg, which would more than double the 170-200 Wh/kg per kilogram in today’s typical EV battery. Part of the initiative is the “Seedling” program, which identifies […]

Panasonic’s new 2170 Li-ion battery cells, which it manufactures at Tesla’s Gigafactory 1 in Nevada, are a key component of the new Model 3. The Japanese manufacturer says it is now supplying the batteries at a loss, but expects to turn a profit next year. “For battery cells for the […]

Kreisel Electric recently won the 2017 European Electric Vehicle Technology Leadership Awards from Frost & Sullivan for having the “lightest” battery on the market. This is a high honor. This also confirms that, although breakthroughs and innovations are great, squeezing more performance and efficiency out of what we have today (lithium-ion batteries) is […]

Silicon anodes are receiving a great deal of attention, as they can enable batteries to deliver 3-5 times higher capacities compared with current graphite anodes. Although silicon is abundant and cheap, Si anodes have a limited number of charge-discharge cycles – typically less than 100 times. Their volume expands enormously […]

on a three-year, multi-million-dollar cathode development program that will focus on improving cathode safety without compromising energy density or battery life. A123 will leverage its battery expertise to commercialize advances in nickel manganese cobalt oxide (NMC) technology originally developed by Argonne, which already accounts for nearly half of the company’s […]

Samsung SDI has decided to make Hungary its Li-ion battery production base in Europe, and will build a new battery plant north of Budapest on a 330,000-square-meter site, using an existing facility that the company built in 2001, and used to make cathode ray tubes. Aiming to start commercial production […]

XALT Energy, a manufacturer of prismatic, large-format battery cells and packs, has launched a new Lithium Titanium Oxide (LTO) cell that it says has achieved better cycle life performance over a wider range of operating conditions than any lithium-ion cell ever built. XALT’s Li-ion LTO cell offers specific energy greater […]

As rechargeable batteries proliferate in everything from cars to smartphones, recycling is becoming a critical issue. Now a team of researchers at the University of South Florida has found a way to use naturally occurring fungi to extract cobalt and lithium from waste batteries. The scientists presented their work at […]

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about some interesting comments Tesla CTO JB Straubel made regarding vehicle-to-grid technology and using old EV batteries for stationary energy storage (for homes or the grid). There was a tidbit in there that I wanted to further highlight on its own, since it’s […]