EV battery capacity could double

[Dr Mordrid]

This goes with my post in Sci-Mil about the new LiION tech by the Argonne National Labs. The article is about the potential for Volt, but other GM and other makers EV's.

MIT Technology Review....

Volt's Battery Capacity Could Double

GM has tipped its hand about the type of battery materials it aims to use in the next generation of the Chevrolet Volt and other battery-powered cars. It has licensed battery-electrode materials developed at Argonne National Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy Lab. These materials, called mixed-metal oxides, could improve the safety and durability of car batteries and help double their energy-storage capacity, potentially leading to substantial costs savings by allowing GM to use a smaller battery pack.

Cost is the biggest problem with the wave of battery-powered vehicles that started to arrive on the market last month. GM's Volt, an electric vehicle that goes 35 miles per charge and has a gasoline generator for longer trips, costs more than twice as much as a similar-sized conventional car, in large part because of the battery. Increasing the amount of energy that a battery stores allows an automaker to use a smaller battery pack, thereby reducing costs.
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The patents cover a range of nickel-manganese-cobalt materials, including new variants that GM and Argonne are developing and some components of the current Volt battery electrodes, which is made by LG Chem, a Korean manufacturer. The company has been able to use the materials because the Argonne patents only apply in the United States. But now LG Chem is building a battery-manufacturing plant in Michigan and must license the intellectual property from Argonne for use in products made there. Other companies such as Sharp are also commercializing batteries with nickel-manganese-cobalt electrodes, but of types not covered by Argonne's patents.
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To increase storage capacity in future batteries, GM and Argonne (working separately) are modifying the nickel-manganese-cobalt material in a couple of ways, says Jeff Chamberlain, manager of Argonne's battery program.

First, they are changing the relative proportions of the three metals, to create a material able to store more lithium ions. Second, they are "activating" some of the inactive components, by freeing lithium from the inactive material so that it can move between the cathode and the anode. Once the lithium ions are free, they move only in and out of the active material, and the inactive material continues to play its stabilizing role.
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Several other companies are working with Argonne's technology, including one, Envia, that is working with Argonne to combine advanced nickel-manganese-cobalt electrode materials with advanced silicon anode materials. This project, which is being funded by the Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy, aims to produce batteries that store three times as much energy as today's lithium-ion car batteries.

[Brian Ellis]

GM has tipped its hand about the type of battery materials it aims to use in the next generation of the Chevrolet Volt and other battery-powered cars. It has licensed battery-electrode materials developed at Argonne National Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy Lab. These materials, called mixed-metal oxides, could improve the safety and durability of car batteries and help double their energy-storage capacity, potentially leading to substantial costs savings by allowing GM to use a smaller battery pack.

Cost is the biggest problem with the wave of battery-powered vehicles that started to arrive on the market last month. GM's Volt, an electric vehicle that goes 35 miles per charge and has a gasoline generator for longer trips, costs more than twice as much as a similar-sized conventional car, in large part because of the battery. Increasing the amount of energy that a battery stores allows an automaker to use a smaller battery pack, thereby reducing costs.
...
This project, which is being funded by the Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy, aims to produce batteries that store three times as much energy as today's lithium-ion car batteries.
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Vapourware, at least for the moment

[Dr Mordrid]

The eternal pessimist, as ever.

The battery tech in Volt is already the commercialization of Argonne tech. This new evolution builds on that.

The new tech is already tested and patented, and with everyone from GM and LG Chem to BASF choosing to commercialize it within the next couple of years at a cost of billions (and which also coincides with the timeline for Volt 2.0) it's safe to say vaporware it isn't.

Nickel manganese cobalt and its decendants are going to be a huge factor in both commercializing EV's and meeting the EPA mileage regs for 2020.

[Brian Ellis]

Until it is in full production and tested under practical conditions by a statistically valid cohort and proven that the claims are justified, it remains vapourware. I've seen far too many claims, patented or otherwise, in my lifetime to be anything but a realist (not a pessimist, a world of difference!).

I invite you to go back, say, 5 years or more in this forum and single out all the great new "breakthroughs" you posted then and find out how many have had their conceptors' dreams expressed into practical reality or are still likely to, even though you swore they were the best thing since God created sliced bread. Very, very few, I'll be bound.

In my company in Switzerland in years gone by, my R&D department came up regularly with ideas that our lab work showed promise. Over 90% of them fell by the wayside for one good reason or another before they went into full production, usually at prototype or pre-production phases, but sometimes even before the prototype. In one case, it was a failure after the first production run, because of an interfacing problem that was unforeseen during practical trials of the 5 pre-production models. Fortunately I found a fix which saved the day. In another case, which I had nicknamed the "plop-plop meter", I withdrew it after pre-production because industrial users found it was so difficult to use that consistent results were rare, despite the fact that word had got round the industry that this tool existed and industry wanted it. That one cost us a fortune but we would have had 500 dissatisfied customers, which would have cost us even more.

It is a reality of life that very few scientific or engineering breakthroughs see the practical light of day. I'm like St Thomas; he needed hands-on proof of the Resurrection. I need hands-on proof that a concept will work in practice and not just in promising words, like your quotation, couched in the conditional tense..