News

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 […]
June 11, 2015

Skeleton Technologies Raises €9.8 Million in Series B, Aims to Make Ultracapacitors the Future for EVs

Estonian/German ultracapacitor maker Skeleton Technologies has raised Series B financing of €9.8 million ($10.7 million) from a consortium that includes electrical equipment manufacturer Harju Elekter Group and Baltic investment firm UP Invest. The company plans to use the funds to ramp up production of its graphene-based ultracapacitors. Customers include hybrid […]
June 7, 2015

Navy Develops Electric Gun Powered by K2’s Li-ion Batteries

It’s not just cars that are getting electrified – guns may be going high-tech as well. The Office of Naval Research (ONR) has ordered a battery system from K2 Energy Solutions to be used in an electromagnetic rail gun, part of an $81,400,000 contract. Rail gun technology uses electromagnetic energy […]
June 5, 2015

Chemists Discover Key Reaction in Sodium-Oxygen Batteries

Chemists at Canada’s University of Waterloo have described a key mediation pathway that explains why sodium-oxygen batteries are more energy-efficient compared with their lithium-oxygen counterparts. “Our new understanding brings together a lot of different, disconnected bits of a puzzle that have allowed us to assemble the full picture,” says Professor […]
June 2, 2015

Mercedes To Offer Home Energy Storage

Like Tesla, Daimler will start offering energy storage solutions, according to recent reports. They will be commercially available in September. In 2009, Daimler founded the subsidiary ACCUmotive to develop lithium-ion batteries for its plug-in hybrids, electric vehicles, and smart vehicles. Since then, solar power costs have decreased and the energy […]
May 21, 2015

E-bike Demonstrates the Potential of Sodium-Ion Batteries

The British firm Faradion is working on sodium-ion batteries, which show promise as a successor to Li-ion technology. In collaboration with Williams Advanced Engineering, which provided batteries for the Formula E electric race car, Faradion has built a sodium-ion-powered electric bike to prove the concept. Sodium-ion intercalation batteries use the […]