Nissan was one of the three recipients in the first round of low interest loans through the U.S. Department of Energy's ATVM program along with Ford and Tesla. Nissan will be getting $1.6 billion from the program that will be used to re-tool part of its Smyrna, Tennessee factory to build electric cars and lithium ion batteries. Out of that amount, apparently over $1 billion will be needed just for the battery production capacity. The battery plant will consist of three production modules each of which is capable of producing 54,000 batteries.

The U.S. battery plant joins a Japanese facility that is starting up in 2010. In addition to these facilities, Nissan and French partner Renault will be building electric cars in Europe beginning in 2011. Because battery packs are heavy, it makes sense to build the packs close to where they will be installed in vehicles. As Renault-Nissan expand production, the alliance is also considering adding as many as four battery plants on the continent. No specific commitments have yet been made for locations yet.


Photos Copyright ©2009 Sam Abuelsamid / Weblogs, Inc.

[Source: Reuters, Automotive News - sub. req'd]

The next stage of Daimler's efforts to electrify road vehicles will start moving ahead this fall when construction begins on a new battery plant. The plant will be part of the joint venture announced last fall between Daimler and Evonik to develop and produce advanced lithium ion batteries. The first factory for German Accumotive will be located in Kamenz, northeast of Dresden. Production at the new facility will start in early 2011 with the first production applications in Mercedes cars beginning a year later. Evonik isn't saying what the production capacity will be other than it will be ramped up in parallel with electric vehicle production.

The venture will produce battery systems using large format prismatic cells like most other automotive applications. Although Tesla Motors isn't mentioned in the press release, the company may be involved in the development of the battery management systems for these packs.


[Source: Evonik]

By fall 2010, Hitachi plans increase its production capacity for lithium ion batteries by 600 percent in the first phase of a major expansion. Hitachi will be supplying the batteries for General Motor's second-generation mild hybrid system that debuts late next year for 2011 model year vehicles. GM has placed an order for enough cells to support 100,000 hybrid vehicles a year. Beyond that, Hitachi is planning to ramp up to build cells for 700,000 hybrids a year by 2015, a 70-fold increase from current levels. The expansion and new production will occur at Hitachi Vehicle Energy Ltd's Tokai factory in Ibaraki Prefecture in Japan. So far most of Hitachi's lithium ion production has been for commercial vehicle applications and the GM batteries will be the first light duty hybrid.

[Source: Reuters]

The long-simmering confrontation between South Korea and Japan has affected all sorts of relationships between the two countries. While mostly peaceful over the last few decades, there remains some bad blood between the two countries. A new rule that the South Korean government will soon introduce could bring the disagreements to the electric vehicle market.

According to the Japanese newspaper the Yomiuri Shimbun, starting on July 1, South Korea will begin to regulate goods that have lithium-ion batteries. South Korea and Japan are two of the world's biggest li-ion battery makers, and the new rule "could in effect shut products using Japanese-made lithium batteries out of the South Korean market," the Yomiuri wrote. Exactly how the li-ion products are supposed to get the certification the South Koreans are requiring isn't exactly clear, one Japanese government official told the paper. How EVs might be affected is also unknown at this time. U.S. products will be exempt from the regulation starting in October.

[Source: Yomiuri via Green Car Congress]

South Korean battery maker LG Chem is getting prepared to supply lithium ion cells General Motors for production of the Chevrolet Volt by building a new cell manufacturing facility. The company broke ground for the new plant in Cheongwon earlier this week and the facility is expected to be running by the first half of 2010. LG Chem already has another plant in Ochang that is building similar cells for Hyundai and Kia for the new hybrid models being introduced by those companies. The Cheongwon plant is expected to cost nearly $800 million.

That's not the end of LG Chem's production investments. The company previously said it will eventually build a cell production facility in Michigan to support U.S. customers, including GM with the Volt. Yang Woong-chul of Hyundai and GM's hybrid engineering director Bob Kruse both attended the ground breaking ceremony.

[Source: Korea Herald]

When we spoke with Coda Automotive's marketing director Kara Saltness a few weeks before the unveiling of the new electric sedan, she mentioned that although Lishen would be providing the batteries for the car, Coda was looking at other options as well. Saltness mentioned a possible U.S. partnership for battery production. This week, Coda announced a new joint venture with Connecticut-based Yardney Technical Products, Inc. The new company will work on designing, building and selling lithium ion battery systems for automotive applications. Although a deal hasn't been finalized yet, Lishen is also expected to participate in the new venture which will eventually supply battery packs for the Coda sedan.

The joint venture company, called Coda Battery Systems LLC, has applied for a grant under the stimulus program to build the plant in Enfield, CT. The new venture plans to employ 600 people at the factory. Yardney supplies advanced battery systems to the military and other government customers. Among the applications for Yardney's batteries are the B2 bomber and the Mars rovers. The press release is after the jump. Thanks to Mike for the tip!


[Source: Coda]
Photos Copyright ©2009 Mike Levine

The battery makers vying for dollars from the Department of Energy's (DOE) Electric Drive Vehicle Battery & Component Manufacturing Initiative just got a little more competition. Boston Power has announced plans to build an advanced lithium ion battery plant in Massachusetts and is seeking $100 million in help from the program. The planned 455,000 sq ft site would increase the company's workforce by 600 and create as many as 2,000 indirect positions in the supply chain. The company expanded its R&D center in the state last Fall to adapt their laptop battery tech for hybrid and electric cars.

The product they have come up with is called the Swing 4400 and has some impressive stats. It holds a similar amount of energy (180 Wh/kg ) as the commodity cells used by Tesla in its Roadster but offers much better cycle life. It also has excellent thermal properties and multiple safety features meant to prevent thermal runaway and cascading cell failure in a multi-cell pack. The official press release awaits you after the break.

[Source: Boston Power via Green Car Congress]

Battery manufacturer Valence Technology has big plans to expand its manufacturing capacity. To help pay for the investment, the Austin, Texas-based company has applied for a $225 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy through the Electric Drive Vehicle Battery and Component Manufacturing Initiative. Valence plans to put another $359.4 million from other state and local incentive programs into the project.

$2 billion was set aside by Congress for the grant program in the stimulus bill passed earlier this year. Valence has already been manufacturing lithium iron magnesium phosphate batteries overseas. It now wants to add U.S. production in Texas to supply the U.S. auto industry. The company has chosen Leander, Texas, north of Austin as the site for the plant and plans to employ 2,700 people by 2012 and 4,000 by 2016. Valence has also previously applied for low interest loans for the project through the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Incentive Program, but no announcements have yet been made about awards from that program.

[Source: Valence Technology]

Dow Corning Toray has developed a new process for infusing carbon electrodes with silicon to help increase the current capacity of lithium ion batteries. While researchers have been working with silicon for some time, the results have been limited. The problem has been evenly distributing the silicon within the graphite material. Dow's new process involves burning a silicon-based polymer material in the presence of the graphite which disperses smaller silicon particles through more of the carbon.

The result is that the current capacity of the electrodes has been doubled to 650-800mAh/g. This would result in more current from smaller cells and packs. The cycle performance is also good because of the low thermal expansion of the carbon even when impregnated with silicon. This results in fewer cracks in the electrode to reduce the capacity. Unfortunately it comes at the cost of poor coulombic efficiency. That is the discharge capacity is only 70-80 percent of the charge capacity. Researchers are working on this problem and hope the process will result in improved automotive batteries.

[Source: TechOn]

This year's "Professor Ferdinand Porsche Award" has gone to Dipl. Eng. Michael Keller from Temic Automotive Electric Motors GmbH, Berlin, and Prof. Herbert Kohler from Daimler AG, Stuttgart. The pair won the €50,000 prize for their work on lithium ion batteries for automotive applications. The jury from the Technical University of Vienna acknowledged the importance of batteries for electric and hybrid vehicles as the most significant change to transportation in a century.

Temic is a unit of Continental Automotive Systems. Continental is supplying a lithium ion battery to Daimler for the S400 BlueHybrid that goes on sale this summer and will be one of the first mass produced hybrids to use that type of battery.

The award was established by Ferdinand Porsche's daughter Louise Piech in 1976. Porsche was an early pioneer in the field of battery-powered cars and built what is believed to be one of the first hybrid vehicles around the turn of the twentieth century. In fact, Porsche's first hybrid was a series hybrid or extended range electric vehicle.



[Source: Porsche]