Polypore International and Sumitomo Chemical have entered into a Settlement and License Agreement which ends outstanding litigation between the two companies. Last February, Charlotte-based Polypore’s Celgard unit filed a patent-infringement suit against Sumitomo over Celgard’s lithium-ion battery separators, which are designed to prevent short circuits and limit safety problems from overheating. Under the new License… Read more »
Dallas, Texas market research and consulting company MarketsandMarkets predicts that the global battery materials market will be worth $11.3 billion by 2018. In 2012, its value was $5.1 billion, and the firm estimates a 13 percent compound annual growth rate from 2013 to 2018. They expect electric vehicles to be the key revenue generators for… Read more »
It wasn’t long ago that most people, if they were aware of electric vehicles at all, thought of them strictly as small, slow, flimsy things, perhaps suitable for short trips to the health food store. Who would have predicted that one of the first automotive niches to be conquered by electricity would be…high-performance motorcycles? Well,… Read more »
US drivers will have to wait until 2015 to test-drive Mitsubishi’s Outlander plug-in hybrid, thanks to bottlenecks in battery production. The promising plug-in SUV went on sale in Japan last January, and has sold 8,100 units there, and 3,200 in Europe. The legacy gas version arrived in the US in July. Mitsubishi President Osamu Masuko… Read more »
Electricity may seem invisible, but storing it in batteries has some very physical effects. As a battery is charged and discharged, electrons and ions rush around from place to place, sometimes causing electrodes to change their shapes over time. As researchers experiment with improved electrode materials, it’s critical to get a microscopic view of what… Read more »
In May, Consumer Reports got everyone’s attention when it awarded the Tesla Model S a road-test score of 99 on a 100-point scale, making it the highest-rated car its team had tested in the last five years. Now that Consumer’s Union has owned a Model S for a full year, and driven it some 11,380… Read more »
As EVs proliferate, the challenges of integrating them with the electrical grid will grow in importance. While an increase in peak demand is a concern, pessimists’ predictions that an influx of EVs will “overwhelm the grid” are vastly overblown. In fact, with some intelligent planning, EV batteries could be a valuable resource that improves the… Read more »
We often hear automotive engineers talk about the need for a better understanding of the components of an EV. Some have said that there is an inherent inefficiency in many systems because the parts – like the battery cells, motors and inverters – have historically been developed independently of each other and then integrated together…. Read more »
Hitachi has begun a demonstration of the Japan-US Island Grid Project on Maui. This joint American/Japanese project, which will operate from December 2013 through March 2015, will demonstrate smart grid technologies that enable the efficient use of renewable energy, using EVs as an energy storage medium to respond to the rapidly changing demands in the… Read more »
The Antelope Valley (California) Transit Authority (AVTA) is purchasing two 40-foot BYD electric buses as well as a wireless inductive charging system. The buses, which were funded through a $1.9-million grant supported by Proposition A local return funds, will begin testing on local routes for a 12-month period to determine their performance in the high… Read more »
