As reported by the New York Times, Envia Systems, a California-based battery manufacturing company, announced yesterday what it calls a “major breakthrough” in battery technology that is “poised to revolutionize cost, range and safety in electric vehicles.”
According to Envia’s press release, the breakthrough is a world record 400 Watt hour/kg lithium-ion battery, at a cost of $150 per kilowatt-hour, which is expected to “slash the price of a 300-mile range electric vehicle by cutting the cost of the battery pack by more than 50 percent.”
Envia was awarded $4 million by DOE’s ARPA-E in 2009, and later received $7 million in funding by a venture capital group owned by General Motors.
“Envia’s new battery technology represents exactly the kind of innovation and breakthroughs that ARPA-E is looking for from the American research and development community,” said ARPA‐E Director Arun Majumdar. “We hope that this low cost and high density battery technology enables wide spread adoption of electric vehicles across the country and around the world.”
What would a breakthrough like this mean for electrified transportation? For public and political support of energy R&D? Would a technical achievement like this be a “game-changer”?
Their 400 watt-hours/kg lithion-ion battery compares unfavorably with at least two batteries in my compilation of “102 Electrical Energy Innovations” in http://www.padrak.com/vesperman. The I. N. Frantsevich Institute for Problems of… Read more »
Beyond a basic threshold (if you can give me 1500+ miles on a charge maybe I think differently about it), this is all about cost. The ability to compete on… Read more »
The only technologies for which I have specific costs are the Moe-Joe orgone energy cell and the electrino fusion power reactor. Inventor Gordon Ziegler calculated that the first prototype electrino… Read more »