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The ride: General Motors will make its own battery packs for the Chevrolet Volt (shown here) and other electric vehicles.
John F. Martin for General Motors
Ann Marie Sastry, a professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Michigan, says that the battery program was started in 2007 because "we faced a serious shortage of engineers in the industry. There weren't enough people well versed in electrification to flip the vehicle portfolio to electric vehicles. We'll need hundreds and hundreds of engineers."
Although GM will build its own battery packs, it will continue to buy battery cells from outside suppliers, since developing new electrode chemistries and manufacturing the cells themselves require expensive equipment, says Kruse. Experts have long predicted that GM would turn to LG Chem, a large, experienced battery company, rather than to startup A123 Systems. Although LG Chem will supply the first-generation battery packs, GM is already developing its second- and third-generation packs, which could use cells from other manufacturers, including A123, with which GM has a development contract.
One of the biggest priorities at the company's new laboratory will be assessing and extending the lifetime of batteries. Lithium-ion batteries (commonly used in cell phones and laptops) lose their ability to store energy in just a couple of years. The Volt battery has been engineered to last eight to ten years, so that it doesn't have to be replaced during the lifetime of a vehicle, but to achieve this, the company had to oversize the battery pack to compensate for a loss in storage capacity. The pack stores 16 kilowatt-hours of electricity, but only 8 of these will be used for the car's 40-mile range. In the future, the company hopes to use far fewer batteries to achieve the same range.
GM and Nissan hope to reduce costs by reusing depleted batteries.
A startup company has a printing method for solid-state batteries.
The large facility is meant to reflect a change of direction for the bankrupt company.
Vulvox has begun experiments on lithium ion batteries with unprecedented energy storage capacity; 42 kwh/kg. They also take advantage of inexpensive processes of manufacturing silicon nanowires. Our breakthrough batteries will store as much energy per unit weight as fuel cells and will be used in the growing fleet of plug in hybrid vehicles. Our R&D program has been underway for several years. Vulvox is developing a comparable battery that will cost much less to manufacture, and we've been in the race to develop a super lithium ion battery for some time now. Our research was based on the same theoretical foundations as the research at Stanford. Our patent pending carbon nanotube adhesive material has shown properties such as ultra high porosity; necessary to manufacture ultracapacitors and it might be useful as electrode material for lithium ion batteries also.
HTTP://VULVOX.TRIPOD.COM
More lying spam by vulvox's so-called president Neil Farbstein.
A company with no employees, but a president - go figure.
Neil spams tech websites with fraudulent claims of research. Nanothechnology, genetics, cold fusion - he's claimed it all.
The Volt is designed to be an EV for (hopefully) 40 miles then ICE power to the electric motor. The primary purpose of the ICE is to power the motor and not to charge the battery. Battery charge is only incidental. A 1.4L engine to power a 2900 lb car? Magic EE.
Guest (jadamone)
RogerB34 you are "mistaken" the Volt ICE is only used to charge the battery which supplies electricity for the electric motor, http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13746_7-10053541-48.html . A turbocharged version will be used to power wheels of the GM Cruze. The Volt does not have a transmission. It works like a variable speed drill's electric motor.
It is quite understandable that people believe it takes quite a bit of power to achieve good performance and if you want a high performance sports type vehicle you might be right. But all the Volt gas engine does is turn a generator that keeps the batteries charged which in turn runs an electric motor.
Here is another way to look at it. As you drive your normal car down the road you are only using about 1/4 of it's available power. For example a 150 hp gas engine is producing about 37 h.p. which is enough on flat level ground. Of course this varies with wind resistance, highway conditions, number of starts and stops, weight of car, etc.
Given that same car then 37 h.p. is enough for level ground but we need a little extra for the Volt for hills, stop and go and other conditions like 0-60 mph runs in 10 seconds. So we will have a smaller engine that produces maybe 50-70 h.p. which should be enough to keep the batteries charged no matter what we do.
This is why electric vehicles are so exciting. You can use a much smaller engine running at it's most efficient power range and convert that power to electrical energy to power the vehicle. We will no longer need 150 h.p. gas engines which are over powered for most conditions and underpowered for some. Hope this helps explain things.
The internal combustion engine and transmission, etc... achieves about 16% energy conversion into useful work; whereas, the electric motor boasts about 90% efficiency in its use of energy. This must be at the root of the seeming discrepancy.
Assuming that 20 million cars produced per year start using Lithium batteries, and each pack is 2000 lbs, thats 20,000,000 * 2000 = 20,000,000,000 lbs of refined lithium.
Lithium is a commodity, and the current market price reflects a demand of a fraction of that. My point is that the battery pack is severely underpriced compared to what it will cost for the millionth vehicle. market forces will kill this. Lithium is not that plentiful, and neither are the rare-earth magnets in the motors... that's why they're called rare-earth.
A tiny diesel motor with electric assist (imagine a smaller battery pack and an oversized starter motor) would have been more thoughtful.
GM isn't the one to trust with making batteries
GM's track record has been anything but helpful to the development of alternate energy.
It wouldn't surprise me if this was just a big smoke screen to cover their sabotage of the alternate energy development somewhere else.
GM can't be trusted at all, they are a multinational exploiter like BP and all the rest.
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
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mkogrady
425 Comments
Most Energy Efficient Plug In
The most energy efficient plug in vehicle made is a laptop computer and a high speed internet connection. It's so efficient that Congress won't pass laws mandating Telecommunting as a National Priority. Telecommuting policies won't use too much of the 2007 Energy Independence Act funds either.
Telecommuting matters in a power hungary world!
www.digitalfuel.org
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