News

Most Charged readers will certainly remember A123, the company that was founded in 2001 on the basis of promising battery technology developed at MIT; received a $249-million grant from the DOE and $100 million in tax breaks from the state of Michigan; raised $380 million in a 2009 IPO; made […]

Tesla has confirmed that it has a contract with South Korean firm LG Chem to provide batteries for Roadster 3.0, a package of range-enhancing improvements for Tesla’s famous first vehicle. The company began taking orders for the $29,000 upgrade in September. Until this announcement, Tesla’s only known battery supplier was […]

Dyson, the manufacturer of high-tech vacuum cleaners and restroom hand dryers, has acquired Michigan startup Sakti3 for $90 million in cash, as reported by Quartz. Founder and CEO Ann Marie Sastry will oversee development of her company’s solid-state battery technology as an executive for Dyson. UK-based Dyson, which invested $15 million […]

Tesla’s Chief Technology Officer JB Straubel gave a talk at the University of Nevada in Reno this week, as the company announced a new internship program and an investment of $1 million in the university’s battery research program. Saying that the transition to a truly sustainable world won’t be accomplished […]

The German company Bosch is apparently aiming to, over the coming years, create a 50 kilowatt-hour (kWh) battery for use in electric vehicles that only weighs 190 kilograms, based on recent comments made by a company researcher. Considering the amount of money that the company is currently pumping into related […]

PowerAmerica, a private-public partnership led by North Carolina State University, has released a call for projects to advance wide bandgap (WBG) semiconductor technology. Funding is available for projects to accelerate commercialization of WBG power electronics applications in high voltage systems, efficient motors and other transportation- and renewable energy-related fields. Objectives […]

Some of the 300 million tires discarded each year in the US could be recycled and used in electrodes for supercapacitors, using a new technology developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Drexel University. The process is described in a paper published in ChemSusChem, titled “Waste Tire Derived Carbon-Polymer Composite […]

Williams Advanced Engineering, the supplier of the battery packs for the Formula E electric racing series, has announced that the maximum power output of the racers’ batteries will increase to 170 kW for season two of the Championship. The battery packs use cells from XALT Energy, and have maximum usable […]

In mid-July, Tesla Motors made a trio of Model S update announcements. The new options included a 70 kWh rear-wheel-drive base model, an upgrade for the high-end battery pack from 85 to 90 kWh (providing about a 6% increase in range), and Ludicrous mode, which offers a 10% improvement in […]

Lithium-ion chemistries are increasingly replacing lead-acid automotive batteries, especially in start-stop and energy recuperation systems, and they are even making inroads into starter battery applications. Electronics such as Freescale Semiconductor’s battery cell controllers are used to manage risks such as overcharge, overheating and internal short circuits. Now Freescale has introduced […]

Batteries get most of the press, but power electronics (gadgets like inverters, onboard chargers and DC/DC converters) are critical components of all sorts of electrified vehicles as well as high-tech energy solutions. As the electromobility/clean energy sector grows, leading companies in the power electronics field could be poised for major […]