In August 2013, KLD Energy announced that it has received official UN and IEC certification for the battery pack solution of its proprietary electric drive system. The announcement marked the end of a five-year development effort and the beginning of high-volume production for the company’s ultra-efficient turnkey oneDRIVE propulsion system. There are hundreds of different… Read more »
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The new A123 looks a lot like the old A123: Q&A with Jeff Kessen
Start-ups are tough. The majority of them do not succeed, particularly those built around new technologies in burgeoning industries. Nowhere is this more evident than in the EV industry. Even with political support and government grants, many companies have miscalculated the market and the capital required to make it into the black. In October 2012,… Read more »
Web of Power: Spider9’s Operating System for Energy
Spider9 weaves a matrix for stationary energy storage and shows that when it comes to fitting battery technology into electric vehicles, it’s not all for one and one for all. Many real-world technologists and engineers take inspiration from the worlds of science fiction, where recurring themes of systems theory take shape in the Grid of… Read more »
ARPA-E awards $27 million for power electronics research
The DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) has selected 14 projects to receive $27 million in funding to support the development of next-generation power conversion devices. These devices, which convert electrical energy from high to low voltages, are critical to all electronic devices, and represent a key enabling technology for electric vehicles. The DOE’s talent… Read more »
ams introduces improved architecture for cell monitoring and balancing
ams AG, an Austrian provider of analog ICs and sensors, has introduced a simpler and more robust method of monitoring and balancing cells in lithium-ion battery systems. The company has implemented the new architecture in a highly integrated chip, the AS8506, to perform distributed cell monitoring and balancing operations for stacked cell modules, including Safe… Read more »
EV-ready garage a standard feature for DC-based builder
Capital City Builders, a builder of luxury homes in the Northern Virginia area, has announced its new EV-Ready Garage initiative, making the installation of a 240-Volt power outlet in the garage standard in all its homes. Managing Partner Ali Khazai believes that the close-in suburbs of the nation’s capital are ideally suited for electric commuting,… Read more »
Johnson Controls unveils Micro Hybrid battery in Frankfurt
It may not be the most glamorous piece of hardware on display in Frankfurt, but Johnson Controls’ first-generation dual-voltage Micro Hybrid battery represents a technology that some say is likely to be incorporated into almost every new vehicle within a few years. Johnson Controls says that its Micro Hybrid technology (aka start-stop technology) can offer… Read more »
The challenges of battery state of charge measurements
Your BMS’s fuel gauge is lying to you. Here’s why that’s not a big deal. Battery management systems (BMSs), and the fuel gauges in them, are a part of daily life for almost everyone. You’ll find them in vehicles, laptops, cell phones, grid-attached energy storage – basically, anything that does work and needs to be plugged in,… Read more »
BMW i3: The launch of many firsts
When you’re writing about the dawn of a new industry, “firsts” and “milestones” come along so often that they may start to lose their novelty. However, the BMW i3, which was officially “launched” in July, and is scheduled to go on sale next year, boasts an impressive number of innovations that has the EV press… Read more »
A closer look at back electromotive force
Why motors generate and generators motor In a previous article I took a closer look at regenerative braking, and mentioned an old engineering saying that every motor is a generator and every generator is a motor (along with the caveat that some are more suited to the opposite purpose than others). This time around I’ll… Read more »