New Battery Technology

Since we seem to be on the topic of oil a lot these days I thought I would throw up some new electric/hybrid-electric vehicle innovations. Battery systems in these types of solutions have a long way to go before they can start to make a dent in our gas consumption but a new technology recently discovered seems to be going in the right direction. A123 Systems released late last year news of a new lithium-ion battery technology that is a big jump ahead of traditional lithium-ion batteries. It is based on a nanotechnology material called doped nano-phosphate.

Traditional lithium-ion batteries can provide the highest energy density of any other battery but they have some drawbacks:
- They tend to vent fire and/or explode if over charged or punctured.
- Their internal resistance increases with use (this amounts to loss in battery life).
- If they are allowed to completely discharge they will die and not come back.
- They are the most expensive battery.

The new lithium ion technology improves in almost all of these areas:
- They are intrinsically safe because the nano-phosphate is thermally stable. Over charging is not a problem because the lithium is fully extracted from the cathode when the battery is fully charged.
- The internal resistance actually decreases with use.
- They can be discharged completely.
- They will probably still be expensive, but I haven’t seen any cost comparisons.
- All of this and they provide more energy density and power density than normal lithium-ion batteries.

Lithium-ion batteries right now are bit too expensive to push into hybrid-electric vehicle market. They are mostly used by wealthy hobbyists looking to pimp out their electric or hybrid-electric vehicles. Though, with greater energy/power/safety performance the new batteries may find larger markets to help push down the price.

It’s cool to think about some rough performance numbers: A123’s website quotes an order of magnitude higher energy density over conventional lithium-ion batteries. Looking at Wikipedia and some other EV websites it seems that lithium-ion based EV’s can go up to 300mi per charge. These cars were probably hacked down to the bare essentials so let us say that a more practical car could only go 100mi. So with the same size battery you could now go 1000mi. Or you could replace the old battery with one that is 1/10 as small saving you both weight (which lets you go a little farther and 100mi) and money in battery costs. Any way you look at it, even on a log scale, an order of magnitude is a big jump. If you are interested, their website has more info and press releases.

www.a123systems.com