In the electric car field we’re worried about public perception of electric car safety. Despite the fact there’s over 200,000 gasoline car fires per year in the U.S. alone, causing hundreds of fatalities and property damage costs, there is inordinately outsized attention paid to the very small number of electric…
One of the negative impacts of regular gasoline powered cars is the lead-acid battery that drives the starter motor, and also helps to run the 12 volt system. Lead acid battery production has a negative impact because Lead is obviously one of the horrid chemicals. While lead acid batteries are…
A $45 million package of Department of Energy grants supporting advanced vehicle technologies included $22.5 million for advanced battery research, and another $8 million for power electronics research. The grants aim to cut battery size and weight in half, allow semiconductors to operate more efficiently and at higher temperature, give greater durability, reliability, and lower…
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…
Most “technology” developments are enjoying a rapid pace of development, and in computer technology there is a truism known as Moore’s Law that claims CPU’s will double in complexity/capability/speed every 18 months. It’s Moore’s Law that explains why our cell phones have more computing power than the supercomputers of the…
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…
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…
Lithium battery startup company Envia Systems plans to announce tomorrow, at the ARPA-E conference, development of a high energy density lithium battery (400 watt-hours per kilogram) which could be the tipping point enabling long range affordable electric cars. Long range electric cars have been possible for quite awhile, Solectria built…
Lithium battery maker Ener1 inconveniently declared bankruptcy the day after President Obama’s State of the Union declared support for the domestic advanced battery industry. Any company can run into trouble if the market conditions shift, that’s what bankruptcy courts are for. Last week when lithium-ion battery maker Ener1 entered bankruptcy proceedings it was…
After ten years in an electric car like the Nissan Leaf, its battery pack might still have 70% of its original capacity, theoretically making it reusable in the smart grid. One of the questions related to electric vehicles is the disposition of the battery packs after a few years when…
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…
Flux Power, a San Diego based startup company, has introduced (on Nov 20) a family of lithium-iron-phosphate battery products. The product line includes a battery packaged with battery management circuits, a charger, and a “drive system” promised to be available in mid-2010. The battery shares look and feel with the…
Because electric vehicles have so few moving parts many claim there are low maintanence requirements and they are more reliable. While it’s true you don’t have to change the oil every 3000 miles or perform other required maintanence at regular intervals there are many things which can break and which…
