Japanese Develop Cure For Range Anxiety
Range anxiety. The performance angst and penis envy of the new millennium. So you want to be nice to the planet. You no longer want to desecrate dead dinosaurs. You want to plug in and tune out.
But you also want visit grandpa and grandma who live 150 miles away, and you don’t want to overstay your welcome with an orange cord dangling out of the window. What to do? It’s so simple, that we wonder why nobody has thought of it:
We need better batteries! The New Millennium Batteries so to speak. The Nikkei [sub] comes with the glad tidings that Japanese battery and materials manufacturers are working their tushes off to bolster the performance of lithium ion batteries for electric vehicles.
- Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings unit has developed technology for speeding up recharging. Holes in insulating materials and natural graphite, result in recharges that are 50 percent faster. Even with the standard household electricity of 110 volts, recharge time drops from 15 hours to a mere 10. A 30-minute recharge promises 100km (62miles) of sheer driving pleasure.
- Toda Kogyo teamed up with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory to develop technology for increasing battery capacity by 50 percent through the use of a newly developed composite material for cathodes. An electric vehicle with this technology can run 50 percent farther on a single charge.
- Zeon Corp. uses rubber as an anode material, something that will be very welcome in colder climes. Even at 14F, the capacity of a recharged battery is still 30 percent better than what you get today. (Don’t ask what it will be below zero.)
- GS Yuasa, has succeeded in making a high-performing battery that uses lithium iron phosphate as a cathode material. Lithium iron phosphate is cheaper than the rare metals used to date and gives the battery a longer life. The capacity of batteries using conventional manganese materials drops to 68 percent after 1,000 charges. The new GS Yuasa battery will deliver 90 percent. The battery may outlast the car! This battery also functions normally at minus 22F. (I wonder why they say that …)
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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One thing that gets me about the "batteries will always suck" and "EVs will never work" arguments is that batteries HAVE gotten much better, and EVs are much more efficient at using energy than combustion engines. Sure, gasoline or diesel carry much more energy than a comparable weight in batteries, but most of that is wasted as heat. I still think hybrids are the next practical step, but EVs are slowly starting to work their way to market. Just because it hasn't happened (outside of Tesla), doesn't mean that it won't or can't.
Not to pick nits, but a drop from 15 hours to 10 is a 33% reduction, not 50%.