Batteries

This afternoon, Tesla Motors released details on its proposed "Gigafactory" to build lithium-ion cells for its future electric cars. To provide enough cell capacity to build a projected 500,000 electric vehicles in the year 2020, Tesla would require more cells than last year's entire global...

The 210,000 plug-in electric vehicles sold around the world last year used a lot of lithium-ion batteries. But if startup automaker Tesla Motors has its way, it will soon need as many lithium-ion cells (of the 18650 format it uses) as are now built worldwide. That's why the company plans to release...

Three large global companies--Bosch, GS Yuasa, and Mitsubishi--have announced a joint venture to improve development of the next generation of batteries for electric vehicles. The group's aim is to double energy capacity, helping electric cars become truly mass-market in the next decade. Today...

Phinergy and Alcoa will work to commercialize the Israeli startup's aluminum-air battery technology.

Humans and batteries--and indeed most other things in the natural world, operate on largely similar principals. Energy is generated somehow, stored, and expended for work. It's only the details that separate these processes, but the gap might shrink with the advent of biobatteries. As ExtremeTech...

A recent 1,200-mile East Coast road trip in my 2013 Tesla Model S electric car proved to be something of a turning point in my view of the car. Fitted with the smaller 60-kilowatt-hour battery pack, my car's EPA range of 208 miles was not quite enough to make it between Superchargers--Tesla's...

Just in time for the holiday-feast season, we now have published charts that detail the effect of cold weather on the battery range of Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt electric cars. Think "range shrinkage". The data comes courtesy of FleetCarma, the Canadian company whose app MyCarma tracks vehicle...

Researchers and development firms regularly reveal battery-technology breakthroughs. Now, Envia Systems--one company that gained much public attention by promising such a breakthrough--faces two lawsuits. One claims that Envia stole its technology from other companies. And General Motors, which...

Save for a few electric vehicles on the fringes of the market--the Tesla Model S, for example, or the tiny Smart Electric Drive--most subcompact and compact electric cars currently offer a range of 80-100 miles. For many people, that's perfectly fine. But it wouldn't hurt to have more, right?...

The month wouldn't be complete without another battery technology breakthrough, and this time it's the turn of lithium-sulfur technology. Researchers at the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are experimenting with a lithium-sulfur battery design with twice the...

Researchers at MIT say that a benign virus could be the next step in improving lithium-air battery technology. Viruses typically have negative connotations--think seasonal flu or malicious files sent to your computer--but biological technology is an increasingly important research topic and one...

When battery maker A123 Systems went bankrupt, it seemed to be just one in a long line of failed energy startups--albeit one with some high-profile customers. Stalled battery production after A123's bankruptcy is considered one of the main catalyst's for Fisker's litany of struggles, while...

Johnson Controls hopes its new compact lithium-ion battery pack will jump start the mass-adoption of start-stop systems.

Tesla held its third-quarter earnings call yesterday evening, and CEO Elon Musk stayed pretty much on message. He reiterated that Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] continues to produce its Model S electric luxury sedan, at a current rate of 550 cars per week, and that it is working steadily to reduce the...

Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] and technology company Panasonic have been working together for several years now, and that relationship is set to expand as Tesla seeks to meet its future battery needs. The two companies have reached an agreement for future automotive-grade lithium-ion battery supply...

To launch its Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric car, General Motors chose to build and expand its very own battery lab. Crosstown rival Ford is taking a different route. According to the Detroit News, it will partner with the University of Michigan by helping to fund a laboratory where car...

Tesla Motors could be close to a battery supply deal with Samsung.

It had to happen sooner or later: a fire in a Tesla Model S. And indeed, as first covered by Jalopnik, Tuesday's fire in one example of the luxury electric sedan outside Seattle, Washington, generated a remarkable amount of media coverage. Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] issued a statement on the accident...

You see and hear it all the time, sometimes from people who really ought to know better. It's the notion that electric cars are going to improve incredibly, amazingly, unimaginably fast ... "because of Moore's Law." If you see or hear that statement, folks, you should view the entire report with...

Electronic sensors don't occupy a huge amount of space in electric car battery packs, but conversely, making sensors smaller could make the packs themselves much more compact. According to the MIT Technology Review, the U.S. government’s Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E)...