Pavel

As every truck driver or heavy equipment operator knows, diesel engines can be difficult to start in low temperatures, or after not being started for long periods. Maxwell Technologies’ Engine Start Module (ESM) is an ultracapacitor-based system that takes over the engine cranking function and remains fully charged, even if […]

Branding is one thing Tesla has absolutely nailed. Well, one of many things. This week (or month) provided a rather obvious example of that for me. But first, a little background: As I think anyone who follows Tesla rather closely knows, Panasonic is Tesla’s big battery partner. That makes it the top […]

“Iron fluoride has the potential to triple the amount of energy a conventional lithium-ion battery can store,” says Song Jin, a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “However, we have yet to tap its true potential.” Jin and his colleagues have been using a novel X-ray imaging technique […]

Since battery-maker A123 was acquired by China’s Wanxiang Group, it has shifted its focus to concentrate on starter batteries, and has big plans to produce batteries for microhybrids, aka start-stop systems. A quarter of the company’s revenue still comes from EV battery packs – its factory in Hangzhou is running […]

Chinese automaker BYD aims to be a major player in the battery business, adding 6 gigawatt-hours of global production in each of the next three years, company spokesman Matthew Jurjevich told Reuters recently. If it continues at that pace, BYD’s capacity will be some 34 GWh of batteries by the beginning […]

Solid-state electrolytes are the talk of the town these days. California-based PATHION has been working to commercialize solid electrolytes since its founding in 2012, building on its exclusive license from Los Alamos National Laboratories for a promising material called Lithium-Rich Anti-Perovskite (LiRAP). At the recent Materials Research Conference, PATHION presented two new […]

EV heating and cooling presents a dilemma: how to keep a vehicle’s occupants comfortable without draining the battery? Engineers are working on various solutions, from heat pumps and adsorption chillers to passenger-focused AC and heat. A group of researchers from the University of Utah, HRL Laboratories and GM Global R&D […]

With the development process of the first gigafactory apparently going quite smoothly, Tesla Motors is apparently already busy courting Japanese battery suppliers with regard to a potential second gigafactory. This possible second gigafactory would of course be located outside of North America, and seems quite sensible in many ways. Considering […]

A fresh look at actual driving records has yielded a surprising (to some) conclusion about the useful lifespan of electric vehicle (EV) batteries. Conventional wisdom has it that EV drivers will ditch their ride after the battery loses 20% of its storage capacity, but our friends over at Lawrence Berkeley […]

The Volkswagen Group’s decision on what exactly to do with the solid-state energy storage technology currently under development by the company QuantumScape will be made sometime before July, according to a recent report from Bloomberg. That report — which cited the Chairman of the Board of Management, Professor Martin Winterkorn […]