Samsung announced last week that is developing new solid-state batteries that could offer double the energy density of current lithium-ion batteries. This would be a major breakthrough for electric cars. Greater energy density means more energy can be stored in a given volume, allowing for increased range without increasing the physical size of a... Samsung solid-state battery tech under development doubles energy density
Samsung announced last week that is developing new solid-state batteries that could offer double the energy density of current lithium-ion batteries. This would be a major breakthrough for electric cars. Greater energy density means more energy can be stored in a given volume, allowing for increased range without increasing the physical size of a...
Heat is the enemy of electric-car battery packs. And while high-performance driving might heat up the packs momentarily, few things you can do to the pack come close to the potential wear and tear inflicted by the kind of charging you’d need to use on a highway trip: DC fast charging. Using what they term “the same industry...
Tesla has made major investments into cylindrical battery cells, using 18650-format cells in the Model S and Model X, and 2170-format cells in the Model 3 and upcoming Model Y. The company also manufactures these cells at its Gigafactory with Panasonic. But now, perhaps combined with other key changes, the automaker appears ready to test a...
The Mercedes-Benz EQC electric SUV was originally supposed to be on U.S. streets and highways by now. Daimler called the decision to delay sales in the U.S. until 2021 a strategic one, so it could focus on Europe. Yet based on a report from Reuters, citing sales figures, Mercedes has struggled to sell a fraction of what it intended, even there...
Researchers in Australia say that advancements made in cathode durability could make lithium-sulfur batteries a reality for electric vehicles soon. The news was reported Friday by IEEE Spectrum following a paper published Monday by researchers at Monash University in Science Advances. In both, researches say lithium-sulfur's lower weight and...
Rare-earth metals drive up the cost of electric-car production and take a larger toll on environments when not responsibly or legally mined. It's one of few blemishes on electric-vehicle production since the 1990s that persist to today. Now, Mercedes-Benz says it has a graphene-organic cell chemistry battery that could eliminate the need for...
Until the infrastructure can catch up—and well beyond then, if you’re talking about go-anywhere electric trucks like those from Rivian—big batteries will be a necessity for getting more people switching to EVs. Rivian has accepted that from the start with its R1T electric pickup and R1S electric SUV, with battery packs that start...
Although electric cars haven’t quite taken off in the 2010s the way some had anticipated, sheer economics are pointing to the 2020s as the time when EVs will find that market fever pitch. From 2010 to 2019, lithium-ion battery prices (when looking at the battery pack as a whole) have fallen from $1,100 per kilowatt-hour to $156/kwh—an...
General Motors and LG Chem will jointly build and develop batteries for electric vehicles that will go on sale in 2023 and beyond, including Chevy's confirmed electric pickup, the companies announced Thursday. GM CEO Mary Barra announced the $2.3 billion deal and said the plant would begin construction next year, near Lordstown, Ohio, where GM...
Like nearly all global automakers, BMW has decided it doesn’t want to manufacture battery cells. How does it maintain an edge on the battery side—and characteristics that are a good match for the automaker—when it’s potentially using what look like the same “commodity cells” as other automakers? The answer to...
The federal government wants to know more about Tesla’s batteries, its charging, its software upgrades, and incidents relating to reported fires—among many other details concerning the majority of Tesla Model S fastbacks and Model X SUVs ever built. In a letter, dated October 24, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration notes...
Dyson, you might say, has gone back to the vacuum—and to many other things. But not cars. In an update yesterday that now occupies what formerly was a teaser for the automotive project, James Dyson, the company’s founder, called the car they’d developed “fantastic,” yet explained that “though we have tried very...
Earlier this month at the Frankfurt auto show, Mercedes-Benz announced that it would source battery cells from carbon-neutral production for the first time. The CO2-neutral sourcing is via a newly inked partnership with Farasis Energy, of China, and Mercedes’ parent company Daimler says that it will save more than 30 percent of the carbon...
Volkswagen announced Monday that it has started a pilot line for manufacturing battery cells, with the aim of keeping electric-car battery development and production resources in Germany. That will lead to the creation of more than 1,000 new jobs by 2024 surrounding the facility in Salzgitter, Germany—including 300 in VW’s development...
Battery research revealed earlier this month and affiliated with Tesla could suggest that the company is well on its way to bringing a million-mile battery to market. The result could last three times as long as Tesla’s current cells—6,000 cycles, across a wide temperature range—and be the electric-car brand’s “secret...
China’s Contemporary Amerex Technology Co., better known as CATL, has in the past several years become a global battery giant. Last week one of its senior executives revealed to Reuters that the company is considering a manufacturing expansion into North America, even though the market for EVs will lag that of China and Europe. The company...
All those rusty buoys, boats, and piers along the world’s coastlines could be doing something much more useful, say scientists at CalTech and Northwestern University. They could be generating electricity. In a paper released in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last month, chemistry professors Tom Miller from CalTech and...
Lithium is a critical ingredient for today’s electric-vehicle batteries. Although a host of chemistries show promise—such as sodium-ion, fluoride-ion, or iron-ion—lithium-ion is proven, and the demand for it has been increasing rapidly as electric cars take off. And yet lithium has become unexpectedly plentiful and a lot cheaper...
The explosion of a 2019 Hyundai Kona Electric in a Montreal, Canada, garage Saturday literally blew the doors off. The owner, Piero Cosantino, told the CBC the car was not even plugged in at the time of the explosion. The report was the first in North America, and possibly the first report in the world, of a Kona Electric explosion or fire. No one...