News

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Graphene, a two-dimensional hexagonal lattice of carbon atoms, has great potential in a number of EV-related applications, including anodes, lithium-sulfur batteries and ultracapacitors. With current technology, however, it’s impractical to use on a large scale, and researchers have been limited to using small flakes of the material. Now a team […]

The iCar is still just a rumor, but Apple surely has been showing a lot of interest in EV-related technology, including large-format batteries. This week, the Cupertino computer-maker agreed to settle a lawsuit alleging that it had been showing a little too much interest in engineers working for Massachusetts battery-maker […]

The Tesla Model S looks to be on track to match (at the least) the battery longevity performance of the Roadster, based on a recent survey of 80 European Model S owners. While you might be saying, “well, 80 owners isn’t much of a data pool,” it’s all that we’ve […]