Batteries Lead To Marriage

Bertel Schmitt
by Bertel Schmitt

Which part of the car of the future can cost more than half of the car, but has a lifespan a little better than a set of brake disks? The battery. No wonder that battery making is what suppliers focus on. If EVs catch on, you want to be in the battery business. Toshiba and Mitsubishi Motors have ganged-up to produce batteries together, says The Nikkei [sub].

For a year, Toshiba and Mitsubishi have been tinkering with a ‘super-charge ion battery’, or SCiB, which promises long life and fast recharging speed. Now they seem to be ready for a more formal arrangement. Several other companies have been or will be cementing similar battery-driven alliances.

Toshiba wants to produce SCiB batteries at their Kashiwazaki plant in Japan. On Friday,he Nikkei reported that Toshiba will supply lithium ion batteries for an electric vehicle that Mitsubishi Motors plans to roll out in the near future. The newspaper also said that PSA is interested to buy Toshiba batteries together with Mitsubishi Motors.

Bertel Schmitt
Bertel Schmitt

Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.

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  • Thebeelzebubtrigger Thebeelzebubtrigger on Jul 03, 2010

    I'd swear I've read that the batteries in the Toyota Prius were giving 100k+ miles worth of life. Though I don't doubt that if electric cars become mainstream we'll see the usual cheap bastard Big Corp products, engineered to last only as long as they feel they can get away with.

    • See 2 previous
    • Greg Locock Greg Locock on Jul 06, 2010

      JimC is on the right track - but the Prius is even more careful. If you don't play silly buggers and just leave the car to work out what it wants to do, it'll only use 20% of the already tiny capacity of its battery. There are tricks you can do to increase that percentage, but the gais in fuel consumption are slight, the reduction in battery life significant. Needless to say the THD logs any silliness, so people who hammer their batteries may get a rude shock when they claim their free battery. One nice side effect of this is that the gradual degradation in charge holding of the battery has no real world effect on mpg. The Volt will only use 60% of its battery capacity, presumable for the same sort of reason. That is, 'fully' charged leaves a 15% headroom, and the engine switches on at around 25% capacity left, and then keeps the battery between 25 and 35% full.

  • Twotone Twotone on Jul 03, 2010

    If batteries are the business to be in, they why has A123 Systems, Inc. (ticker: AONE) tanked this year after their IPO and government subsudies to develop and manufacturer car batteries? This should have been a much stronger play (and stock) then Tesla. Twotone

  • Pete Madsen Pete Madsen on Jul 03, 2010

    I am sure that in the early days of the auto industry, when steam, gasoline, and electric cars were still duking it out, the electric-car guys were saying "If we could only get a good battery we could sell millions of these things." Well, what's changed now? The electric cars got left behind even though the electric starter hadn't been invented yet, and folks had to hand-crank their Model T's. The chemistry of batteries has been and will be more complicated and expensive in terms of operating conditions, inputs, and outputs, than the chemistry of internal combustion.

  • M 1 M 1 on Jul 04, 2010

    Nitpicking, I know, but rather a poor intro, considering "brake disks" (which actual car-people call "rotors") often outlive the rest of vehicle...

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