Bolivian state-owned enterprise Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos (YLB) and German sustainable-solutions specialist ACI Systems (ACISA) are collaborating to mine, process and commercialize Bolivia’s ten-million-ton Salar de Uyuni lithium deposit. ACISA intends to use the processed ore to produce cathode materials and battery systems. The project is expected to create 500 to 1,000 direct jobs and… Read more »
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BP sees big opportunities for EVs and has recently been investing in EV-related companies
The oil and gas giant’s EV investment rationale is outlined in its new report, BP Technology Outlook. Demand for travel is central to modern society. Currently, transport accounts for 20% of global primary energy use. The global light-duty fleet of cars, vans, and light trucks is here to stay for the foreseeable future. In fact,… Read more »
Rollback of clean car standards slammed at public hearings
This week, the US DOT and EPA held three days of hearings to gather public comments on the Trump administration’s proposal to reverse existing federal fuel efficiency and emissions standards. At the hearings in Fresno, Dearborn, and Pittsburgh, hundreds of people, including physicians and health advocates, former EPA officials and technology entrepreneurs, environmental advocates and… Read more »
DC-link power capacitors technological advances for power electronics design
Sponsored by EPCOS, a TDK Group Company By Matt Reynolds, Director of Marketing, Piezo and Protection Devices The technology behind capacitors has been around since late 1745 when a physicist in Germany found that an electrical charge could be stored by connecting a high-voltage electrostatic generator by a wire to a volume of water in a hand-held… Read more »
UK LEAF buyers claim Nissan misled them about range, charging times
Some UK buyers of Nissan’s new 2018 LEAF are ever so cross. As the BBC reports, some say charging the LEAF can take three times longer than claimed on Nissan’s website, and others have found that the range is far shorter than the 235 miles (378 km) they were promised. Nissan denies that there’s a… Read more »
A closer look at film capacitors
Plastic film capacitors relentlessly continue to take over many of the duties in EV power electronics that were once performed by the venerable aluminum electrolytic type, mainly because film capacitors exhibit much lower losses and have a much longer operational lifespan, especially at ambient temperatures in the 75-85° C range. The tradeoff is that film… Read more »
New R&D partnership aims to put Québec in the Li-on battery race
Hydro-Québec and Nouveau Monde Graphite (NMG) have reached a research and licensing agreement that they hope will make Québec a contender in the booming battery business. The government-owned utility Hydro-Québec will assist NMG in developing small-scale mining operations to produce graphite which will be used as anode material for Li-on batteries. NMG’s graphite operation began… Read more »
A closer look at contactors
Contactors may not be the sexiest component in an EV, but they are critical both for safety and general functioning. Basically a heavier-duty version of the relay, a contactor is used to switch power to any of the loads supplied by the traction battery in an EV. The motor drive, the heating and cooling systems,… Read more »
PNNL research finds that optimal salt concentration increases battery life
Researchers at the DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have discovered that the “special sauce” of batteries is all about the salt concentration. By getting the right amount of salt right where they want it, they’ve demonstrated that a lithium-metal battery can undergo about seven times more charge/discharge cycles than batteries with conventional electrolytes. Finding an electrolyte solution… Read more »
Garnet ceramic electrolyte helps block dendrite formation
Researchers at the University of Maryland have developed a new template that they hope will enable a safer alternative to liquid electrolytes, which have several drawbacks, including flammability, leakage and dendrite formation in the electrodes. In “Lithium-ion conductive ceramic textile: A new architecture for flexible solid-state lithium metal batteries,” published in Materials Today, UMD researchers… Read more »