News

California-based Enevate Corporation has announced an “ultrafast charging” feature for its batteries, which has been demonstrated to provide a 90% charge in 15 minutes while increasing capacity compared to current Li-ion batteries. Enevate’s HD-Energy Technology uses silicon-dominant composite anodes, and the company claims an 25-50% increase in energy density over […]

Cambridge scientists have developed a working demonstrator of a lithium-oxygen battery that is more than 90% efficient, and can be recharged more than 2,000 times. Lithium-oxygen, or lithium-air, has been touted as the ultimate battery technology, because its theoretical energy density is ten times that of lithium-ion solutions. In “Cycling […]

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 […]