Battery-powered cars have a lot to recommend them, but they still have one major flaw - the batteries! Compared to almost any other energy storage solution, even the best of today's electrochemical batteries still have very low energy density and very high cost. Every major car manufacturer is pursuing electrically-driven vehicles with lithium ion batteries as a solution to the problem of CO₂ emissions and oil consumption. They all are aware of the fact that virtually all of these cars will be money losers for at least the first few years until production volumes are ramped up. The presumption is that as more batteries are made in larger volumes the price will come down to a point where the cars might become profitable.

But is this a realistic assumption? It might not be if extracting lithium from the ground becomes increasingly expensive in the same manner that oil is from older fields and other unconventional sources. With dramatically increasing demand for the material, it becomes a real possibility that the price of batteries may never come down. Recycling lithium from depleted batteries is apparently also far more expensive than virgin material. There is of course the possibility of new material breakthroughs that would eliminate the need for lithium. There are also possibilities like silicon nano-wires or ultra capacitors that could dramatically increase energy storage density and reduce the size and requirement for materials like lithium. The only thing we know for sure right now is that we don't know. All this just goes to show the need for pursuing multiple parallel paths for energy diversity, because there doesn't appear that any one solution will be sufficient.

[Source: Autoblog]

We've been keeping pretty close tabs on the Hyundai Avante / Elantra LPI mild electric hybrid. Just when we thought there couldn't possibly any new details to add about the propane burner, out pops a press release from the Korean manufacturer announcing that the LG Chem-supplied battery underpinning the hybrid component of the car will actually be lithium polymer (li-poly) as opposed to the lithium ion type that had been previously publicized. Now you may be thinking to yourself, understandably, "Ok, so what? What's that even mean?" Well, we could tell you that the electrolyte in the li-poly battery is held within a solid polymer composite instead of an organic solvent, but that probably wouldn't mean as much as the hard numbers describing its energy capacity and longevity and such. Unfortunately, those numbers weren't supplied by Hyundai who were content only to say this formulation has "...higher energy density, lower manufacturing costs, being more robust to physical damage and they can also take more charge–discharge cycles before storage capacity begins to degrade." Thank you, Hyundai.

We will have to take their word for those claims for now. If they do manage to begin retail sales of the car in Korea around this time next year, as currently planned, at least one of the other claim touted in their bulletin should indeed be true. They will be the first to feature this chemistry. For all the details and chest thumping, check out the press release after the break.

[Source: Hyundai]

By now we've all heard about "thermal incidents" with various type of lithium batteries and we've probably even seen videos of exploding laptops. Many of you have also complained about why it's taking so long for car-makers to get lithium batteries to market. One of the main causes of batteries getting too hot is overcharging or charging too fast.

Unfortunately determining the state of charge of a larger battery pack is not a trivial matter (we'll be following up with more information on this soon). A lot of the battery development work involves developing software to determine the state of charge and control the charging. For a look at what can happen when you over charge a lithium polymer battery, check out the video after the jump.

[Source: Kipkay, Metacafe]

Solar power has the highest power density among all renewable energies, so we should certainly be devoting a great deal of research into how best to capture and use that power. Being that solar electric power cells generally deliver their power in the form of DC current, as opposed to AC current like would be used in a home, it makes sense to pair solar power with batteries and battery powered devices. One problem with this strategy is that electronics tend to be small, and get smaller with each revision. Not only that, when one thinks of solar cells, they generally think of flat surfaces, of which there are few on electronic devices, or cars for that matter. Fortunately, all of these problems are being worked on, and solutions are being developed.

Take, for instance, this article from Technology Review. This article details what the European Polymer Solar Battery project has come up with: thin, flexible lithium polymer batteries with integrated solar recharging. What is noteworthy about this project is that the batteries must have a charging limiter built in to protect from over-charging the batteries. The batteries being used are the same as the ones used in the iPod nano. What possible problems might this be a solution to? Being a blog on automobiles, I think of the car battery. Removing the large lead-acid battery from under the hood and the associated charging system, i.e., the alternator or generator, belts and pulleys would obviously save gas and cut down on maintenance.

[Source: Technology Review]

Lithium-ion batteries have been in use for some time in our personal electronics devices, most notably in laptop computers. The switch was made to lithium-ion from NiMh, or nickel metal hydride batteries because they are lighter, cheaper, and smaller than other kinds of batteries. They don't suffer from the 'memory' effect that gave nickel batteries a bad name, they contain relatively few toxic metals and are fairly simple to recycle. Nickel metal hydride and ni-cad or nickel cadmium batteries were the batteries of choice for high power applications before lithium-ion.

Recently, though, lithium-ion has had some controversy. It seems that in the quest for ever-higher capacities, some manufacturers (SONY is the big one) have pushed the technology too far. Some laptops were catching fire or exploding because the batteries got too hot.

Enter lithium polymer? Perhaps... Li-po or lithium polymer batteries have been in use under pretty demanding applications such as battle-bots and radio control airplanes for a little while, and some companies are investigating them for other uses. Treehugger investigated them as did CNet news. Time will tell if these new-tech batteries can challenge other newcomers in the field like A123Systems, Altair Nanotechnologies and Firefly Technologies offerings.

Related:

• Battery companies battle it out for market share
• GM Awards two lithium-ion battery contracts for PHEV Saturn Vue
• NEC in talks to partner with Nissan on lithium ion batteries

[Source: wikipedia.org]

Fashion industry stars André and Coqueline Courrèges have produced a third fully-functional EV prototype, the Zooop, a lightweight car that can go 450 km (about 280 miles) per charge and uses "Lithium Polymer batteries that are lighter, have greater power density don't overheat, charge quicker and offer many more recharges" and can reach speeds of 180 km/h (about 112 mph), according to Gizmag.

The Maison de Courrèges, the fashion house run by André and Coqueline is a long-time promoter of EVs, using them in fashion shows since 1969. The duo revamped its EV promotion with the release of La Bulle at the 2002 Michelin Bibendum Challenge, then came out with the EXE in 2004. Typical of their behind-the-scenes involvement with EVs in the past, the Courrèges are not saying what their future plans are in the EV field.

[Source: Gizmag]