Battery Research Ups Capacity 30%

doug · 04-10-2008, 01:51 AM

Researchers improve Li-on battery life, increase capacity 30 percent - Engadget

BBHighway · 04-10-2008, 04:07 AM

They say it needs more work before it's ready for EV use, but it's still encouraging.

There is a lot of R&D, and a wide variety of approaches being explored to improve batteries right now. I'm confident that over time, maybe 10 years or so, we will see a 2x improvement in capacity, and hopefully a 2x improvement in cost too.

Batteries of today are just barely feasible for EV use. Even though Tesla has done a great job, there are still cost issues, calendar life issues, and Tesla had to go to great lengths to get the performance achieved in the Roadster.

Big price and performance improvements will make them easily workable for a much wider range of EV applications.

Thanks Sony, for being the first to market a commercial lithium ion battery!

SByer · 04-10-2008, 11:35 AM

Since rechargeable batteries became a staple of consumer electronics and portable computing, there have been immense drivers to improving battery technology. There are practically no ah-ha moments in science, just lots of incremental improvements across time, and the amount of money and brainpower thrown at a problem directly influences the rate of improvement. We've seen an immense increase in battery research in the past two decades, and the results are starting to show.

I especially like the curve in Tesla's CARB rebuttal whitepaper on page 5.