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Startup 24M has emerged from stealth mode to introduce its semisolid lithium-ion cell, which the company claims will deliver improved performance at half the cost of current Li-ion batteries. “The lithium-ion battery is a brilliant, enabling technology, but its economics are flawed. It’s prohibitively expensive; it’s cumbersome and inefficient to […]

Sion Power Corporation has signed a three-year agreement to supply its proprietary lithium-sulfur batteries for use in Airbus Defence and Space’s Zephyr High Altitude Pseudo-Satellite (HAPS) aircraft. The HAPS is an aircraft that stays aloft for long periods of time, allowing it to perform many of the functions of a […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]