battery pack

  • VW Battery Packs

    For the past 50 years, the German auto industry has enjoyed quite the roll of growth and success in the U.S., built largely on its expertise with one specific technology: the internal combustion engine. But now the importance of that advantage is fading, with electric cars on the rise and the highest-value component within them the battery pack. Increasingly, companies with headquarters in South Korea, Japan, and China—not Germany—have taken the lead not just on cells and chemistry but in the design of modules and sometimes the entire pack architecture. Meanwhile Volkswagen, for...

  • Riksbyggen Viva co-op housing complex, Gothenberg Sweden [Credit: Riksbyggen, Creative Commons]
    Volvo reuses bus batteries for solar storage

    As solar installations ramp up and electric vehicles have been on the market for a few years, automakers are starting to look for ways to get more life out of old electric-car batteries, repurposing them for stationary storage. And if you're going to use vehicle old batteries for storage, you might...

  • Thomas Ulbrich
    VW confirms it’s planning for solid-state batteries by 2025

    Solid-state batteries sometimes sound a bit like the missing link that would punt electric vehicles soundly into mainstream acceptance. The list of potential virtues for solid-state tech, which would replace the polymer/gel electrolyte commonly used in lithium-ion cells with a solid one, is...

  • VW to use quantum computers in electric-car battery development
    Quantum computers could make specialized batteries for Volkswagen EVs

    Quantum computers could analyze and help build highly specialized electric vehicle batteries in the future, Volkswagen announced this week. Using the highly complex computing tech, researchers simulated industrially relevant molecules in EV batteries that could help shape the next generation of...

  • 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV
    Some Chevrolet Bolt EVs get new battery pack for sudden loss of power: here's why

    It's every electric car owner's nightmare: the car indicates that remaining range has suddenly plummeted to zero, the battery pack stops providing current, and the car won't run. For some 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV drivers, that scenario has happened in real life. The problem has resulted in a program...

  • 2013 Nissan Leaf, Nashville area test drive, April 2013
    Nissan Leaf refurbished batteries offered for older electric cars, in Japan

    With more than 300,000 Nissan Leaf electric cars on the road, some more than six years old, battery degradation is becoming more and more of an issue. The different rates of capacity loss are a topic of much discussion among Leaf owners, but it now seems likely that Nissan's choice of passive air...

  • 2016 Nissan Leaf SL, Hudson Valley, NY, Dec 2015

    The Nissan Leaf, at least for the moment, remains the highest-volume electric car produced in history, with more than 300,000 sold. One of the measures that kept its cost down was the use of passive air cooling for its battery pack, rather than the pricier liquid cooling used by other makers to keep battery temperatures within limits. Nissan has already changed the cell chemistry in its batteries once, switching in 2015 to a so-called "lizard cell" said to be more resistant to degradation caused by very high temperatures. DON'T MISS: 2016 Nissan Leaf Offers 107-Mile Range With 30-kWh Battery...

  • Nissan electric-car battery
    Nissan, Sumitomo open electric-car battery recycling plant in Japan

    The town of Namie, in eastern Japan, was devastated by the earthquake and tsunami of 2011, and has struggled to recover from the devastation of that day. Almost seven years later, the first new plant in town is set to open, one contributing to clean energy and zero-emission vehicles to boot...

  • Prototype production of battery modules for BMW Group’s fifth-generation electric powertrain
    Silicon anodes to boost lithium-ion battery capacity within a few years

    The main impediment to mass electric-car adoption is price, and the driving force behind that is the cost of lithium-ion battery cells. The performance of those cells improves at about 7 percent a year, give or take: Either the same cell costs 7 percent less after a year, or a carmaker gets 7...

  • Professor John Kelly of Weber State University, Utah, shown before Chevy Bolt EV battery disassembly
    Chevrolet Bolt EV electric car: what's inside the battery? Teardown video shows all

    The battery packs of most modern electric cars are far different than those in your mobile phone or other portable devices. In most cases, they include hundreds or thousands of cells, arranged into modules, and usually surrounded by channels containing liquid coolant to keep the battery in its...

  • 2018 BMW i3, 2017 Frankfurt Motor Show
    BMW partners with Solid Power to develop solid-state cells for electric cars

    While lithium-ion cells have powered all but a handful of plug-in electric cars since 2008, carmakers have looked further down the road toward solid-state battery cells with an eye toward launching them sometime during the 2020s. On Monday, BMW Group and Solid Power announced that the two companies...

  • 2017 Hyundai Ioniq Electric (European spec), 2016 Geneva Motor Show
    Hyundai believes electric-car battery prices will stop falling by 2020

    The automotive business is one that turns raw materials into highly complex finished goods. When the prices of key commodities—especially raw materials—rise, everything downstream in that process becomes more expensive. That's Hyundai's concern over battery prices from 2020 onward, as...

  • Akio Toyoda, President, Toyota and Kazuhiro Tsuga, President, Panasonic

    For the 20 years since the introduction of the Prius, Toyota has enjoyed the first-mover advantage in hybrid cars, and leveraged those green credentials to boost public perception of its brand as a whole. But Toyota has yet to mass-market a battery-electric vehicle in the U.S., as Nissan has done with the Leaf. Toyota executives have consistently said hydrogen, not plugging in, is the best technology for zero-emission vehicles. DON'T MISS: Shift to electric cars will cost money, may lack excitement: Toyota CEO However unwillingly, Toyota is now modifying its strategy—and one of the...

  • Tesla Model S battery pack teardown: frame from YouTube video by JehuGarcia, Feb 2017
    Lithium-ion battery packs now $209 per kwh, will fall to $100 by 2025: Bloomberg analysis

    Battery-pack prices are the lowest they've ever been, and like a yoga-obsessed limbo contestant, they're primed to go even lower. A report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, based on a survey of "more than 50 companies," states the average cost of a electric-car battery pack is now $209 per...

  • XING Miss R Lithium-Ion Battery Pack
    New approach to electric-car battery cooling: immerse cells in coolant

    Regardless of how your vehicle is powered—whether it be an internal-combustion engine or a battery pack powering an electric motor—most powertrains have a common enemy: heat. For Taipei-based XING Mobility, heat is a major concern for its high-performance Miss R model as its battery...

  • Prototype production of battery modules for BMW Group’s fifth-generation electric powertrain
    Ethical sourcing for electric-car minerals: Toyota, Honda, VW, Ford, others sign pledge

    As automakers develop more efficient electric motors, EVs pulling electrons from dirtier, coal-powered grids are as clean or cleaner than even the most efficient fossil-fueled cars when it comes to equivalent tailpipe emissions. But electric vehicles still have a supply-chain problem. A partnership...

  • Chinese electric-car startup SF Motors headquarters
    Chinese electric-car startup SF Motors bought Tesla founder's battery-tech firm

    Although Elon Musk is the name now associated with Tesla, the current CEO was not a founding figure in the electric-car startup. That honor goes to two men, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. Eberhard subsequently sparred with Musk in and outside of court. Following his time at Tesla, Eberhard...

  • Fisker EMotion
    Fisker still aims at solid-state electric-car batteries, as patents attest

    At first, Fisker had promised its upcoming EMotion electric sedan would launch with revolutionary solid-state batteries. The company then backtracked in June, saying the technology would not be ready. Instead, the EMotion will launch with conventional lithium-ion batteries. Fisker announced on...

  • European Union battery alliance announcement

    As it stands today, Asia dominates the production of electric-car battery cells globally, with Japanese and Korean companies representing the bulk of the industry outside of booming Chinese makers. Europe, however, lacks a single major player in the fabrication and assembly of lithium-ion battery cells for cars that plug in. Now European leaders aim to change that, through an alliance that would build battery cells for future vehicle and technology applications. DON'T MISS: Tesla starts cell production at Gigafactory, shows it off to investors Battery cells are essentially the building block...

  • Toshiba SCiB battery cell
    Toshiba claims 6-minute recharge for new electric-car battery cell

    Electric cars pale in comparison to gasoline or diesel-powered cars when it comes to the time presently required to add energy for more driving distance. Although automakers have begun to curb "range anxiety" with longer-distance electric cars, battery charging times on lengthy road trips remain a...

  • Volkswagen ID Crozz II concept, 2017 Frankfurt auto show
    World's 3rd largest battery firm may ally with VW for electric cars in China

    Many automakers have announced they will electrify entire vehicle portfolios in the years to come. With more electrified cars on the road, battery production will become increasingly more important. Adding to the positive outlook for lithium-ion cell makers is Volkswagen's potential partnership...

  • Flat lithium-ion battery back for next-generation Mercedes-Benz electric cars
    Why better-battery startups fail in the US and how to fix it: report

    Over the past decade, advances in battery technology have progressed steadily, but not quite as quickly as impatient electric-car advocates might like. With electric cars and plug-in hybrids fast becoming part of every carmaker's lineup, durable, less expensive, and higher-capacity batteries are...

  • Mercedes-Benz Generation EQ concept, 2016 Paris auto show
    Mercedes to invest $1 billion to build electric SUVs, batteries in Alabama

    Daimler, the parent company of Mercedes-Benz, announced that it will invest up to $1 billion to build electric SUVs and batteries in and around its assembly plant in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The plans, first reported reported Thursday in The Wall Street Journal (paywalled), represent a major expansion...

  • Mercedes-Benz EQ electric car concept  [photo: Axel Harries]
    Mercedes plant to make batteries, electric motors after 113 years of engines

    The first vehicle in history considered to be an automobile was the Benz Motorwagen of 1885. It was also the first vehicle from an automaker that has been around for the duration of the industry: we know it today as Mercedes-Benz. In other words, the company has been building cars for 132 years...

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