Gas 2.0

US Secretary of Energy, Dr. Steven Chu

Arizona State University professor Cody Friesen thinks he can make a metal-air battery with up to 11 times the energy density of lithium batteries at potentially half the cost. Now the US Department of Energy’s advanced research incubator ARPA-E has just given his spin-off company, Fluidic Energy, a $5.13 million research grant to try and do just that.

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The Salamander of myth and legend: a creature which lives in water but renews its life in fire. It’s rubbish, Bunkum, steaming horse manure…  a bit like an electric car with neither plug nor solar panels.

Except no one’s told those clever boffins over at Advanced Power and Energy Sources Transportation (APET) in Hong Kong. According to them, the Salamander and the cordless EV are about to step out of myth and into reality.

APET’s revolution centres upon how zinc air batteries can power EVs. The technology is proven on the small scale: hearing aid battery adverts dominate any Google search for “zinc air battery”.

Furthermore, as zinc air batteries need only zinc, air and water to produce electricity they are likely the most environmentally friendly ones around.

However, upscaling the technology from a hearing aid to a car has always been a problem.

Until now.

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Researchers have found a way to create a battery out of Nickel and Lithium that can store more than 3.5 times the energy of lithium-ion batteries and are much safer to boot.

Lithium-ion batteries are great and all—having heralded in a new age of portable electronics and allowed for the possibility of mass-market electric cars—but they have a few major drawbacks. For instance, they have a propensity to catch fire and explode and, although they have a much better energy storage capacity than say lead-acid or nickel metal hydride (NiMH) batteries, they still weigh too much to pack more than a couple hundred miles of range into a passenger car.

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A group of researchers at Uppsala University in Sweden have discovered that a particular type of algae — with a bad reputation for causing damaging algal blooms in oceans throughout the world — produces a substance that can be used to make inexpensive, non-toxic, simple-to-build, flexible, thin and durable batteries that, after optimization, are expected to perform on par with today’s most advanced lithium-ion batteries.

The key to the discovery lies in the way in which the algae, Cladophora, produce a unique type of cellulose with a very large surface area (approximately 80 square meters of surface area per gram of material).

By coating this algal cellulose material with a thin layer of a well-known, conductive polymer, called polypyrrole (PPy), the team has “succeeded in producing a battery that weighs almost nothing and that has set new charge-time and capacity records for polymer-cellulose-based [non-metallic] batteries,” according to Gustav Nyström, a doctoral student in nanotechnology and one of the main researchers.

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Setting its sights on the burgeoning US market for car batteries, cutting-edge Swiss zinc-air battery company, ReVolt, has decided to take advantage of Oregon’s generous business tax credits for development of next generation car technologies.

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What would happen if your Chevy Volt’s battery pack got wet during a carwash?  What if you tried to drive it through a foot of standing water after a rainstorm?  What would happen if you lost control of your Chevy Volt and drove it into a canal?

Water and electricity do not go hand-in-hand, exactly, and despite the excitement and energy surrounding Chevy’s upcoming Volt EV, a number of people are still asking questions about the basic safety of the Volt’s powerful batteries.

GM took those concerns to heart, and released some rare “behind-the-scenes” commentary on the car’s underwater testing on GM’s VoltAge blog.

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There has been one benefit to having the American auto companies bankrupt, and that is that many companies and ideas for cars that would have otherwise never had a chance now do. One such idea is from CT&T United, newly based in the United States. The company has announced plans for a proprietary manufacturing, sales and service model called RASS or Regional Assembly and Sales System. This system will help to support the companies U.S. market launch of their all-electric vehicles and each RASS will cost between $8-$10 million to build.

“Just as just-in-time parts delivery from Toyota revolutionized the auto industry, we believe the RASS system from CT&T has the potential to do the same by regionalizing manufacturing and sales and allowing us to offer EVs at an incredibly reasonable price point,” said Young Gi Lee, Chairman and company founder. “RASS will also speed up our national rollout so that we an stay on the leading edge of the EV market.” Read the rest of this entry »

President Obama announces $2.4 billion in grants to speed the manufacturing and deployment of the next generation of batteries and electric vehicles

As part of the $787 billion stimulus package approved in February, Congress agreed to include $2 billion in research and development grants for advanced battery technologies, and today, speaking in Elkhart, Indiana, the President announced that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will fund 48 new advanced battery and electric drive components manufacturing and electric drive vehicle deployment projects in over 20 states.

The President said the announcement marks the single largest investment in advanced battery technology for hybrid and electric-drive vehicles ever made. Read the rest of this entry »

This week, Vellozi unveiled a rendering of its new SOLO crossover plug-in electric vehicle (PHEV) that sports an on board multi fuel turbine battery charger. The car was designed to perform just like a gasoline fueled car and will go from 0 to 60 miles per hour (mph) in 6 seconds with a top speed of 130 mph and will achieve 100 miles per gallon (mpg). Just fast enough to outrun the cops in California.

According to the company press release, “The vehicles are true electric cars in nature and are powered by a combination of lithium ion batteries and super capacitors, which in turn, are recharged by an on-board multi fuel micro turbine battery charger or by the electrical grid. Some of the fuels that could be used by the Velozzi vehicles include gasoline, diesel, ethanol, methanol, butanol, biodiesel and natural gas to mentioned a few. The vehicles will also have the ability to reverse its polarity and serve as a power generator, able to power equipment and even a home if necessary.” Read the rest of this entry »

A team of Japanese scientists have developed a new type of lithium-air battery cell with an ultra-large capacity, and say that it holds great potential for the next-generation of electric cars.

Researchers at the country’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) predict that at a filling station, the driver of a vehicle equipped with the new battery could make use of a revolutionary new cassette refill system, and then continue driving without waiting for batteries to be recharged.

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Editor’s Note: This is a 4-part series covering my trip to Michigan to test-drive the Chevy Volt. See post 1. LiveBlogging from the opening of GM’s New Battery Lab, and 2. Chevy Volt Test Drive: How GM’s Electric Car Works. Disclaimer: GM flew me out for this event. This post is in no way affiliated with the GM ads that appear at the margins.

The real reason we were in Warren, MI wasn’t to test-drive the Volt, but to be on hand for the grand opening of GM’s new battery testing facility. The $25 million Global Battery Systems lab is now the largest battery testing facility in the United States, and is four times larger than the company’s old lab.

GM made a strategic decision to keep battery development in-house, because it will likely be a key competitive advantage in the race to commercialize electric vehicles. The lab already employs 1,000 engineers who work on advanced battery systems like the one found the the Chevy Volt. Read the rest of this entry »

The United States Department of Energy (DOE) announced yesterday that over the next three years it is ploughing $11 million into research projects to develop advanced batteries for electric cars.  The projects are also in line to benefit from a whopping $19 million in further support from the private sector.

A total of seven cutting-edge projects will focus on improving battery material performance and developing the manufacturing processes to produce them.  The ultimate aim is to reduce the cost of batteries for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), one of the main financial barriers to more widespread uptake.

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Editor’s Note: Sebastian is the newest addition to Gas 2.0’s writing team. Welcome Sebastian!

The 900-pound gorilla in the waiting rooms of the industries serving the green car market has been H.R. 1, or the Obama Stimulus Plan. Regardless of how much the Democrats ballyhooed it, or how much the Republicans maligned it, the bill will be signed into law by President Obama today.

So what does it really mean for the hybrid and electric vehicle industry? To reduce it to its essence: Mo’ money.

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In December, amidst much gleeful hand-wringing, the imminent demise of all the alternative car companies and electric vehicle start-ups was all over the intertubes, as our second Gilded Age crashed this fall into “the worst depression since the Great Depression”.

Headlines full of schadenfreudly screeches like “Oh no! Tesla sedan delayed five minutes! Now surely they will go out of business!” “Another EV startup bites dust!” were gracing a gleeful media.

Among these alarmist statements was a much touted story about the near-death of TH!NK, the Norwegian EV maker, which had been scheduled for U.S. delivery in 2009.

Never mind that TH!NK had placed a $70 million dollar battery order with Enerdel a few months previously. Now, all was lost. No $25,000 freeway speed EV for America.

Well, think again, pundits. After the virtual collapse of the company last month, the U.S.A. (where the original TH!NK was murdered by U.S. lawyers fighting CARB zero emissions rules in the 90’s) could be just where the TH!NK gets resuscitated this year. How ironic.
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Since the late 1800s, the primary impediment to the adoption of electric vehicles has been battery technology. And while the technology has advanced by leaps and bounds in the last decade or two (compare your cell phone with one from the early 90s), with a threefold improvement in energy density and more than an order of magnitude improvement in power density, it still lags behind gasoline.

Some have argued that current technology is sufficient — that the ability to drive 1 1/2 hours to 3 hours nonstop is good enough for the overwhelming majority of trips, and that paired with a range extender, rapid chargers, or battery swapping, you have a viable means of replacing the gasoline car. However, there still is a great deal of pressure to get electric vehicle range up to that of gasoline.

Enter Yi Cui. Again.

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