Toyota Tsusho, a member of the Toyota Group, announced that it has signed a Share Subscription Agreement with Orocobre Limited to become a 15% shareholder. The total investment amount will be about AUS $292 million. The company believes that lithium demand is expected to continue growing with the shift to EV, in addition to the… Read more »
Silicon anode specialist Nexeon, along with a couple of partners, has been awarded £7 million in Innovate UK funding for the SUNRISE project, which will develop battery materials based on silicon as a replacement for carbon in the cell anode Nexeon will lead the silicon material development and scale-up stages of the project, while polymer… Read more »
Thermal interface materials (TIMs) serve as the thermal path between a device and a heat sink. In automotive environments, extreme thermal stability is required to support the long product lives and warranties. So TIMs are critical to the thermal design of EV and HEV power modules where the material can account for up to 50% of… Read more »
Researchers at the University of Waterloo in Canada have developed a way to stabilize lithium metal electrodes by forming a single-ion-conducting and stable protective surface layer in vivo. In “An In Vivo Formed Solid Electrolyte Surface Layer Enables Stable Plating of Li Metal,” published in the journal Joule, Quan Pang, Xiao Liang and colleagues explain how they… Read more »
Researchers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have developed a way to mitigate the risk of battery failure during automobile accidents by including slits along the electrodes. In “Limiting Internal Short-Circuit Damage by Electrode Partition for Impact-Tolerant Li-Ion Batteries,” published in the journal Joule, the research team explains how this technology could allow manufacturers… Read more »
Carbon fiber-reinforced plastics represent a promising lightweight replacement for heavy steel. However, for carbon fiber to be widely adopted, new, more economical composites need to be developed. Unfortunately, carbon fiber properties are difficult to model, as they depend on complex features such as fiber loading, length distribution and orientation. Now researchers at the DOE’s Pacific… Read more »
Toyota and Panasonic have agreed to begin studying the feasibility of a joint automotive prismatic battery business. Panasonic has positioned lithium-ion batteries as one of its key businesses, and its automotive batteries are used by many automakers worldwide. Toyota, maker of the Prius hybrid and the Mirai fuel cell vehicle, has been a holdout when… Read more »
Ultracapacitor manufacturer Skeleton Technologies has signed a distribution agreement with Sumitomo Europe to provide energy storage solutions for the EV industry. Skeleton’s graphene-based ultracapacitors boast high power density, a recharge time of 2-3 seconds and more than one million life cycles. In EVs, ultracapacitors can be used in tandem with lithium-ion batteries, an arrangement that… Read more »
The DOE has announced up to $100 million in funding for new projects as part of ARPA‑E’s latest OPEN funding opportunity (DE-FOA-0001858). Areas of research covered by this FOA include all aspects of transportation, including electrification and energy efficiency. Under the Transportation Technical Category, subcategories include: electric motors; fuel cells; alternative vehicle designs such as… Read more »
The BMW Group plans to consolidate its battery cell expertise at a new interdisciplinary competence center, which will open in early 2019. The company will invest a total of 200 million euros in the location over the next four years. Speaking at the ground-breaking ceremony, BMW Board Member Klaus Fröhlich said, “We will be concentrating… Read more »