Mazda on Monday announced a new Japanese battery plant that will assemble cylindrical cells into modules and battery packs for use in a planned electric vehicle based on a dedicated platform. Located in Iwakuni City, in Japan's Yamaguchi Prefecture, the plant targets 10 GWh of annual production, Mazda said. Cells will be supplied by Panasonic...
The United Automobile Workers union asked a federal labor regulator to conduct an election at a factory Ford jointly owns with a South Korean battery company.
General Motors is investigating a new way of configuring prismatic battery cells to improve cooling characteristics. A patent filing from the automaker published by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), dated Dec. 26, 2024 but originally filed by GM Jun. 23, 2023, details stacking of layers in an inverted "U" shape, as opposed to...
General Motors is following a handful of other automakers and battery firms in developing mixed-chemistry battery packs for electric vehicles. GM laid out its version of this concept in a patent filing published by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Nov. 28, 2024. In that document, which was first filed by GM Aug. 2, 2023, the...
A better industrial policy for the United States involves more risk taking, not less.
Toyota is due to receive $4.5 million in federal funding for research into automating the teardown and rebuilding of used electric vehicle battery packs for eventual reuse. The funding comes from the Energy Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), under the Catalyzing Innovative Research for Circular Use of Long-lived...
Ford and SK On will receive a $9.63 billion government loan for their BlueOval SK battery joint venture, according to a report Monday from Reuters. The news ups the original loan amount, which was $9.2 billion, reported in June by The New York Times. The Department of Energy loan—the largest so far by the Biden administration related to EV...
Massachusetts-based Factorial has introduced a process for manufacturing solid-state battery cells, in the size range that electric vehicles can use, that is also close to what can be used for mass production. The company has been providing test cells to automakers, but on Thursday announced that it had scaled sample cells to an...
New electric vehicle battery chemistries and configurations are constantly under development, but a new study highlights the importance of testing them under realistic conditions. Published in the journal Nature Energy by researchers from Stanford University and the Energy Department's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, and first spotted by...
Stellantis on Thursday announced an agreement with Texas-based Zeta Energy to develop lithium-sulfur batteries that could significantly reduce cost and pack weight, while boosting charging speed. The automaker and Zeta Energy claim lithium-sulfur chemistry can deliver comparable volumetric energy density to current lithium-ion battery cells, but...