Category: Politics

The US subsidiary of South Korean company LG Chem last month began producing batteries for the Chevrolet Volt at its Holland-area facility.

LG Chem spokesman Randy Boileau says employees completed “pre-production testing” with General Motors Co. and began ramping up production in July. He says LG Chem anticipates the first shipments from the facility will come in September or October.

LG Chem drew attention during its 2010 groundbreaking, when President Barack Obama traveled to Michigan for the event.

Melbourne is set to become a key testing ground for electric vehicles within Australia with the launch of an electric vehicle hub that includes Victoria’s first fast-charging stations and an electric car for public hire.

The project brings together the Victorian Government, Moreland City Council, ChargePoint, GoGet, Toyota, the local community and businesses to share information, promote discussion and foster development of the electric vehicle industry.

Inaugurating the new hub, Minister for Public Transport and Roads Terry Mulder said Friday, “The Coalition Government recognizes the long-term benefits that EVs will provide for our transport system and the environment."

The EV hub located at Moreland City Council offices includes two standard EV chargers, one dedicated to the car share EV; one EV fast charger; and a Toyota Prius plug-in hybrid electric car, supplied through GoGet car-sharing scheme, for staff use and public hire.

In addition, Moreland City Council has installed a standard charging station in Fawkner to supplement its public EV charging infrastructure.

The Victorian government has invested nearly A$50,000 in the creation of Moreland City Council’s new electric vehicle hub as part of its A$5 million Electric Vehicle Trial project.

To encourage the adoption of electric and hybrid vehicles, all of Moreland City Council’s EV charge stations, including the fast-charger that takes just 30 minutes instead of overnight, will be available for the public free of charge for at least 12 months.

“Moreland City Council is providing the necessary infrastructure to encourage Victorians to use electric vehicles and make it accessible and convenient, which will encourage more people to choose this sustainable transport option," Mulder said.

In 2012 Mitsubishi, Nissan, Holden introduced their electric vehicles into Victoria; in the near future Renault, Ford, Toyota, BMW and Porsche all have plans to sell their electric vehicles into the state.

“This facility is another milestone in Victoria’s evolving EV charging network and an important step towards the State’s sustainable transport future,” Mulder said.

“This project is a great example of how the Electric Vehicle Trial is providing the foundations of an emerging marketplace for electric vehicles in Victoria and Australia,” the minister said.

Moreland residents will be provided with discounts and incentives to join GoGet and experience the EV. Moreland City Council will take out a business membership to GoGet so council staff can use the car when it’s available for hire.

Moreland Mayor Cr Oscar Yildiz said the hub will be actively promoted for public use, to encourage council staff, local residents and businesses to test the benefits of using an electric car. “The pilot project is a perfect opportunity to test the viability and popularity of these facilities in the Coburg area, with a view to this service becoming an ongoing offering,” Yildiz said.

The Electric Vehicle Trial will run until mid-2014, to gather a better understanding of the timelines, processes and barriers electric vehicle technology faces across Victoria.

Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have designed and tested an all-solid lithium-sulfur battery with approximately four times the energy density of conventional lithium-ion technologies that power today’s electronics.

A new all-solid lithium-sulfur battery developed by an Oak Ridge National Laboratory team led by Chengdu Liang has the potential to reduce cost, increase performance and improve safety compared with existing designs.

The ORNL battery design, which uses abundant low-cost elemental sulfur, also addresses flammability concerns experienced by other chemistries.

“Our approach is a complete change from the current battery concept of two electrodes joined by a liquid electrolyte, which has been used over the last 150 to 200 years,” said Chengdu Liang, lead author on the ORNL study published this week in Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

Scientists have been excited about the potential of lithium-sulfur batteries for decades, but long-lasting, large-scale versions for commercial applications have proven elusive. Researchers were stuck with a catch-22 created by the battery’s use of liquid electrolytes: On one hand, the liquid helped conduct ions through the battery by allowing lithium polysulfide compounds to dissolve. The downside, however, was that the same dissolution process caused the battery to prematurely break down.

The ORNL team overcame these barriers by first synthesizing a never-before-seen class of sulfur-rich materials that conduct ions as well as the lithium metal oxides conventionally used in the battery’s cathode. Liang’s team then combined the new sulfur-rich cathode and a lithium anode with a solid electrolyte material, also developed at ORNL, to create an energy-dense, all-solid battery.

“This game-changing shift from liquid to solid electrolytes eliminates the problem of sulfur dissolution and enables us to deliver on the promise of lithium-sulfur batteries,” Liang said. “Our battery design has real potential to reduce cost, increase energy density and improve safety compared with existing lithium-ion technologies.”

The new ionically-conductive cathode enabled the ORNL battery to maintain a capacity of 1200 milliamp-hours (mAh) per gram after 300 charge-discharge cycles at 60 degrees Celsius. For comparison, a traditional lithium-ion battery cathode has an average capacity between 140-170 mAh/g. Because lithium-sulfur batteries deliver about half the voltage of lithium-ion versions, this eight-fold increase in capacity demonstrated in the ORNL battery cathode translates into four times the gravimetric energy density of lithium-ion technologies, explained Liang.

The team’s all-solid design also increases battery safety by eliminating flammable liquid electrolytes that can react with lithium metal. Chief among the ORNL battery’s other advantages is its use of elemental sulfur, a plentiful industrial byproduct of petroleum processing.

“Sulfur is practically free,” Liang said. “Not only does sulfur store much more energy than the transition metal compounds used in lithium-ion battery cathodes, but a lithium-sulfur device could help recycle a waste product into a useful technology.”

Although the team’s new battery is still in the demonstration stage, Liang and his colleagues hope to see their research move quickly from the laboratory into commercial applications. A patent on the team’s design is pending.

“This project represents a synergy between basic science and applied research,” Liang said. “We used fundamental research to understand a scientific phenomenon, identified the problem and then created the right material to solve that problem, which led to the success of a device with real-world applications.”