Category: Battery News

Vacuum cleaner inventor Sir James Dyson invests $15m into company that could revolutionise battery technology.

Inventor and entrepreneur Sir James Dyson is making his first investment outside the business he founded and which made him a billionaire, giving his financial backing to a company that hopes to revolutionise battery technology.

Sir James who made his fortune inventing and developing the bagless vacuum cleaner is investing $15m into US company Sakti3 which is developing “solid-state” batteries.

The money is part of a larger $20m investment round in Sakti3 that includes a deal to commercialise the company’s research and incorporate it into Dyson products.

Sir James said: “Sakti3 has achieved leaps in performance which current battery technology simply can’t. It’s these fundamental technologies batteries, motors that allow machines to work properly.

“The Sakti3 team has amazing ambitions, and their platform offers the potential for exponential performance gains that will supercharge the Dyson machines we know today.”

Most batteries in commercial use today rely on lithium-ion technology which contains a pressurised flammable electrolyte, which is vulnerable to damage, and also means they are heavy and limits their ability to store power.

Solid-state batteries do away with the liquid electrolyte, and instead replace it with a metal one which coats the battery’s electrodes. As well as being safer and able to withstand higher temperatures, using a metal electrolyte means more exotic materials can be used which store more energy, making the solid-state batteries more powerful, smaller and lighter.

Sakti3 has produced a battery with an energy density rating of 1100 watt hours per litre using the technology, 50pc better than current lithium-ion batteries.

Sakti3 has been investigating how to improve batteries for almost a decade, since the company was spun out of the University of Michigan. Along the way it attracted $50m in equity investments, including from Khosla Ventures, Beringea, Itochu and auto giant General Motors.

Sakti3 named as one of MIT’s most innovative companies began by computer modelling the technology and is now scaling up prototype batteries into production.

Ann Marie Sastry, founder and chief executive, said: “It was an honour to be approached by Dyson because it wanted what we did much, much better batteries.

“There is a great deal of knowledge and passion on both sides, and Dyson’s engineering team has the capability and the track record to scale up new ideas and make them a commercial reality.”

Massachusetts researchers using a fabricated form of carbon have developed battery technology that they hope will enable electric cars to travel far longer distances.

Chemists Dunwei Wang of Boston College and Wei Fan of the University of Massachusetts used an engineered form of the element — called 3DOm carbon — to enhance reactions between lithium and oxygen in batteries.

Researchers seeking a more efficient battery — one capable of allowing cars to travel hundreds of miles without recharging — have focused on the relationship between lithium and oxygen. They believe such "lithium-air" batteries would resolve size and cost constrains faced by current lithium ion batteries.

But the presence of carbon, an essential component in all batteries, previously proved too unstable to generate longer life cycles for the lithium-oxygen reaction.

3DOm carbon, which has a far more orderly molecular structure, apparently resolved those issues. In the German journal Angewandt Chemie, Wang and Fan reported the engineered carbon, along with the addition of molecular coatings, produced substantial improvements in the lithium-oxygen discharge cycle.

"We demonstrated that a particular form of carbon can be used to support a new type of chemistry that allows for energy storage with the promise of five to 10 times more energy density than state-of-the-art lithium-ion batteries we see today," Wang said.

The chemists hope the developments eventually lead to lithium-air batteries that can meet demand for energy, size and cost in the auto industry and other manufacturing sectors.

Samsung SDI has agreed to acquire the battery pack business of Magna International, a leading global automotive supplier.

The acquisition is expected to enhance Samsung SDI’s capabilities in batteries for electric vehicles by combining the company’s established leadership in battery cells and modules with Magna's expertise in battery packs.

Magna’s advanced technology and experience in providing global automakers with battery packs will also help Samsung SDI secure customers in the fast-growing automotive battery markets in Europe, North America and China.

"The acquisition is a key strategic step for Samsung SDI to strengthen the competitiveness of our automotive battery business,” said Namseong Cho, President and CEO of Samsung SDI. "It will provide new momentum to expand our business and customer base.”

Under the agreement, Samsung SDI will acquire the entire battery pack business from Magna Steyr, an Austria-based operating unit of Magna International, including all 264 employees, production and development sites and existing contracts of the business.

Financial terms of the deal will not be disclosed. The transaction is expected to be completed during the first half of 2015, pending regulatory approvals.

The global market for electric vehicles, including hybrid and plug-in hybrid models, is forecast to reach 7.7 million vehicles by 2020, compared with 2.1 million in 2014, according to research firms B3 and IHS.

Electric-car battery maker A123 Systems has sued Apple Inc for poaching top engineers to build a large-scale battery division, according to a court filing that offered further evidence that the iPhone maker may be developing a car.

Apple has been poaching engineers with deep expertise in car systems, including from Tesla Inc, and talking with industry experts and automakers with the ultimate aim of learning how to make its own electric car, an auto industry source said last week.

Around June 2014, Apple began aggressively poaching A123 engineers tasked with leading some of the company's most critical projects, the lawsuit said. The engineers jumped ship to pursue similar programs at Apple, in violation of their employment agreements, A123 said in a filing earlier this month in Massachusetts federal court.

"Apple is currently developing a large-scale battery division to compete in the very same field as A123," the lawsuit read. The suit was reported earlier by legal website law360.com.

Neither Apple nor A123 immediately responded to requests for comment and Apple has not responded to the allegations in the complaint. The company also sued five former A123 employees, who could not be reached for comment.

A123 Systems is a pioneering industrial lithium-ion battery maker, which was backed by a $249 million U.S. government grant. It filed for bankruptcy in 2012 and has been selling off assets.

Lithium-ion is a battery technology that can be used in applications from computers to airplanes, but A123 specializes in big batteries that can be used in big machines, including cars. A123 did not say what specifically the engineers worked on.

It said in its lawsuit that the engineers who left were of such caliber that the projects they had been working on had to be abandoned after their departures. It also accused one of the five defendants, Mujeeb Ijaz, of helping Apple recruit among its ranks.

"It appears that Apple, with the assistance of defendant Ijaz, is systematically hiring away A123’s high-tech PhD and engineering employees, thereby effectively shutting down various projects/programs at A123," according to the lawsuit.

"They are doing so in an effort to support Apple’s apparent plans to establish a battery division that is similar if not identical to A123’s, in competition with A123.”

In its complaint, A123 said it believed Apple was looking to hire other battery engineers from companies including LG Chem Ltd, Samsung SDI Co Ltd, Panasonic Corp, Toshiba Corp and Johnson Controls Inc. None of the companies immediately responded to requests for comment.

A123 added that former executive Ijaz also contacted its battery partner SiNode Systems on behalf of Apple. Ijaz's outreach to SiNode "confirms that his work on behalf of Apple is at least substantially similar (if not identical) to his work at A123," the filing said.

SiNode did not respond to a request for comment.

Trying to build an actual car would mark a dramatic shift for the maker of the iPhone and iPad. Apple often researches projects which are then discarded, but has so far mainly stuck to its core expertise in mobile and electronic devices.

Whether it will build and release an electric car or a more evolved autonomous vehicle remains to be seen, the source told Reuters last week. But evidence is mounting that the maker of smartphones and other mobile gadgets is, like Google Inc, researching and developing next-generation car technologies.

Silicon Valley is competing to create software to run self-driving vehicles, as well as services associated with autonomous driving, such as mapping, car-sharing and car recharging services.

Data on LinkedIn, the professional networking site, shows that Apple has been siphoning up automotive engineers and experts, many with expertise in autonomous driving technology, at a significant pace.

A search of LinkedIn profiles turns up more than 60 former Tesla employees now employed by Apple, including dozens of hardware, software, manufacturing and supply chain engineers. There are also a variety of ex-Tesla recruiters, retail or sales specialists, attorneys and product managers.

Apart from the five defendants, at least six other ex-A123 engineers had moved over to Apple, according to their LinkedIn profiles, though with titles like "Technical Program Manager," their duties at Apple are unclear.

Researchers at the University of California have developed a novel paper-like material for lithium-ion batteries. It has the potential to boost by several times the specific energy, or amount of energy that can be delivered per unit weight of the battery.

This paper-like material is composed of sponge-like silicon nanofibers more than 100 times thinner than human hair. It could be used in batteries for electric vehicles and personal electronics.

The nanofibers were produced using a technique known as electrospinning, whereby 20,000 to 40,000 volts are applied between a rotating drum and a nozzle, which emits a solution composed mainly of tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS), a chemical compound frequently used in the semiconductor industry. The nanofibers are then exposed to magnesium vapor to produce the sponge-like silicon fiber structure.

Conventionally produced lithium-ion battery anodes are made using copper foil coated with a mixture of graphite, a conductive additive, and a polymer binder. But, because the performance of graphite has been nearly tapped out, researchers are experimenting with other materials, such as silicon, which has a specific capacity, or electrical charge per unit weight of the battery, nearly 10 times higher than graphite.

The problem with silicon is that is suffers from significant volume expansion, which can quickly degrade the battery. The silicon nanofiber structure created in the Ozkan's labs circumvents this issue and allows the battery to be cycled hundreds of times without significant degradation.

"Eliminating the need for metal current collectors and inactive polymer binders while switching to an energy dense material such as silicon will significantly boost the range capabilities of electric vehicles," Favors said.

This technology also solves a problem that has plagued free-standing, or binderless, electrodes for years: scalability. Free-standing materials grown using chemical vapor deposition, such as carbon nanotubes or silicon nanowires, can only be produced in very small quantities (micrograms). However, Favors was able to produce several grams of silicon nanofibers at a time even at the lab scale. The researchers' future work involves implementing the silicon nanofibers into a pouch cell format lithium-ion battery, which is a larger scale battery format that can be used in EVs and portable electronics.

Korean companies are building up a solid lead in the market for electric vehicle batteries.

According to a market report on automotive batteries published by SNE Research on January 12, Korean companies held a 41 percent share of automotive battery patents as a percentage of the global total. LG Chem held 757 patents among 4,427 patents in 2014, accounting for 17.1 percent of all global patents. Samsung SDI owned 528 patents, accounting for 11.9 percent, while Hyundai Motor owned 244.

Japan’s Hitachi, a rival of Korean companies in the automotive battery industry, accounted for 7.9 percent of global patents, owning 349 patents in 2014. Toyota owned 242 patents, accounting for 5.5 percent of all patents. The share of patents owned by Japanese companies was no more than 60 percent of the share owned by Korean companies in 2014. Tesla Motors in the U.S. owned 65 patents, accounting for 1.5 percent of all patents.

U.S. companies owned 1,428 patents overall while Korean companies owned 1,039 patents. Japanese companies owned 989 patents and European companies held 569 patents in 2014.

Patents categorized to be concerning automotive batteries are related to technologies in assembly, cooling modules, durability, battery management, capacity control and thermal control.

Kenny Kim, CEO of SNE Research, said that based on the report, battery focused companies will take the lead in the automotive battery market in the future, replacing automobile companies.