Which fuel has the best likelihood of replacing the gasoline/diesel stranglehold that’s threatening humanity with a global warming catastrophe? Hydrogen? Electricity? Recently someone on Twitter made the claim shown above – that a car industry insider, with over 30 years of experience, claims that many senior people in the car…
The quest for long range electric cars is heading towards lithium metal batteries, according to two companies who presented at the IDtechEx battery technology conference last week in Santa Clara. The companies, Sion Power and Solid Energy, both claim the lithium-ion battery won’t supply the needed energy density and cost improvements to implement…
Because electric car battery packs are expensive, some in the industry think the pack should be leased separately from the car. Doing so would reduce the price of an electric car, making it more affordable, speeding up electric car adoption. That was the value proposition offered by Better Place, for…
The whole car industry must be able to compete against a 200+ mile range $35,000 MSRP electric car from Tesla Motors, by 2017. That fact is probably what’s behind today’s news/rumors that Nissan may be shutting down its battery factories and switching to LG Chem as their battery supplier. In…
Tesla Motors, with plans to be making 400,000 cars a year or more by 2018, is pushing suppliers to build a truly gargantuan battery cell manufacturing plant. While Tesla Motors’ plan to increase Model S production to 40,000 cars a year by the end of 2014 will be good for their…
Tesla Motors (NASDAQ: TSLA) could diversify its supply chain by signing up a new battery cell maker. Tesla Motors is talking with Samsung SDI to supply battery cells, according to a report in the Korean Herald. This would diversify a critical component in Tesla’s supply chain, and potentially give the company a much-needed boost…
The news is buzzing today with word that GM is working on a 200 mile range Chevy Volt. Bloomberg News has a report claiming that GM’s CEO Dan Akerson said this: “There will be breakthroughs in battery technology, they’re on the horizon. We’re actually developing a car today which is…
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) believes that a single cell failure, a short circuit in one cell, on board the Boeing 787 Dreamliner airplanes is the culprit in the battery pack fires that have grounded those airplanes. The problem began occurring about a month ago, several planes had fires…
Lithium-air batteries have been one of the supposed saviors of electric vehicles, with ultra-high energy density. Some researchers at the Institute of Physical Chemistry at Justus-Liebig-University Gießen in Gießen, Germany have developed Sodium-air battery technology they say is far better than Lithium-air. The key flaw of Lithium-air batteries is, according to…
Today A123 Systems announced a Chapter 11 bankruptcy and sale of the company’s automotive business assets to Johnson Control. This is the beginning of the end for the company that was formerly the darling of the green technology hype machine. The company has developed some amazing battery technology, but ran…
Falling battery pack prices will contribute to lower cost of ownership for electric cars, and a few years into the future electric cars could be cheaper to own than gasoline powered ones, according to a report from McKinsey Quarterly. A study released recently by McKinsey & Company says that, because…
At the core of electric cars is the electricity storage technology being used. Most commonly electricity is stored in chemical batteries, which store electricity as chemical bonds in a soup of specific elements. The key thing which is enabling the wave of electric vehicle advances is advances in battery pack…
Apparently some of the upcoming commercially available electric vehicles will separate the battery pack and vehicle purchases. Famously that is the business plan of Project Better Place who is proposing that customers lease the battery pack and buy the car. Nissan has not made a clear decision regarding the LEAF…
