By Tom Saxton, Chief Science Officer, Plug In America With over 160,000 170,000 plug-in vehicles on the road in the US, an increasing number of drivers are depending on public charging to extend the useful range of their vehicles, both for extended trips in large metro areas and for even longer road trips. At the same time, there is… Read more »
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CalBattery’s new SiGr anode material hopes to break the battery bottleneck
California Lithium Battery took advantage of national and local government programs so it could focus on its revolutionary silicon-graphene anode material. Now with EV, electronics, and energy storage customers lining up, it hopes to break the battery bottleneck. When you think about a bottleneck, you think about constriction – something that moves in a particular… Read more »
Financing fast chargers: Q&A with Fuji Electric’s Larry Butkovich
In March 2012, Fuji Electric Corporation of America announced plans to begin selling its DC fast charging stations in the US. At that time, the company had already deployed over 300 of its chargers in other markets around the world. The company’s international experience gave it practical insight into the challenges of the EV charging… Read more »
2014 Cadillac ELR: Technology trickling up
Nowadays, when the in-crowd thinks of the planet’s coolest car, a Model S or one of the European brands might come to mind, but there was a time when the unchallenged monarch of automotive luxury was the Cadillac. Surely no other car has been mentioned in as many classic movies and blues songs. And a… Read more »
Creatively displaying BMS data
Brian Gallagher has had a variety of engineering and management roles designing human machine interfaces (HMIs) in the biotech and automotive industries. Most recently, he is the cofounder of Andromeda Interfaces, which develops HMIs for many different industries. With the adoption of lithium-ion battery technology in electric vehicles, the role of battery management systems (BMS) has become… Read more »
Fuel cells vs batteries for vehicle powertrains
Jeffrey Wishart, a Senior Project Engineer at Intertek, conducts research and development on products and services in the areas of energy, the environment, and advanced transportation. In addition to his supervisory position at Intertek, Dr. Wishart worked for several years at ETEC LABS (the research and consulting division of ECOtality) and at a utility company… Read more »
Porous Power’s ceramic battery separator aims to enhance performance of Li-ion batteries
Porous Power Technologies has announced the launch of Symmetrix NC2020, a ceramic battery separator designed to improve thermal stability and safety of large-format lithium-ion batteries. “Symmetrix NC2020 is non-flammable and more resistant to shrinkage than conventional separators,” according to the company. “This makes cells more stable when damaged or abused and can prevent or delay… Read more »
New microscopy technique gives researchers a better look inside batteries
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 »
A new roadmap for plugging EVs into California’s electrical grid
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 »
GM invests $121 million to expand Volt plant
GM has announced plans to invest $121 million to improve its Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Plant, where the Volt, Ampera and the new 2014 Cadillac ELR are built. The company will expand the 3.6 million-square-foot plant, adding an additional 450,000 square feet to give it more space to store parts on-site. “We basically started busting at the… Read more »