Tesla Motors recently filed for a patent on a hybrid battery pack design that enables joining metal-air and lithium-ion battery cells into one battery pack, to implement a much larger total energy capacity and therefore a longer driving range. The idea is “just” a patent at this moment, and metal-air…
Routinely some news makes the rounds touting some far off future battery technology as the savior of electric cars. The headline vaporously screams we’ll be driving cars powered by graphene, or lithium air, or compressed air, or something or other. There are several ways to think about this and the…
Toyota has long clung to the Nickel-Metal-Hydride (NiMH) batteries, claiming that lithium-ion batteries are too expensive. While that might be the case, there are dozens of research projects going on that aims to increase energy density, increase power density, and reduce the cost of batteries. What it means is that…
Several good milestones were reached in the world of Tesla Motors. The first expansion of the Supercharger network began with construction of stations on the East Coast. That’s a good milestone, however the company seems to be behind original projections for the network in California. That the lawsuit from the…
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…
