Over in Japan, automakers – working with partners – as well as companies in other industries are researching technologies to improve the performance of storage batteries for use in both vehicles and homes, according to a report.
Toyota is one of these; working together with the Tokyo Institute of Technology and the High Energy Accelerator Research Organisation, the automaker has come up with a prototype next-generation storage battery that’s based on a solid core instead of a liquid one. Because it doesn’t have an easily combustible liquid core, the new-gen battery doesn’t require fire-retardant materials, which will allow the use of a simple structure to lower costs.
The battery can easily be processed into sheet form, and is able to store several times the amount of electricity, volume for volume, than the current generation of electric vehicle batteries, its developers say. The extra capacity could thus enable a higher maximum driving distance per charge for compact EVs to around 1,000 km, from the 200 km or so now, the report added.
Toyota and its partners aim to further improve the battery and commercialise it sometime in 2015 to 2020, and adds that the tech can also be used to design compact, home-use storage batteries.
Meanwhile, Mazda – together with Hiroshima University – has come up with a new electrode material that it says can boost battery capacity by roughly 80%. The material, which is based on molecular spheres of carbon measuring several hundred nanometers in diameter, can approximately halve a battery’s weight but maintain the same levels of storage capacity. Mazda says the new electrode material is likely to be commercialised in about five years.
Besides the two automakers, electronics giant NEC says it has developed a lithium-ion battery with an electrode that uses manganese instead of cobalt, which is more expensive. It has also altered the composition of the battery’s electrolyte and improved its durability, making it possible for the unit to be recharged 20,000 times.
This will make for the development of household storage batteries with a 13 year life span, compared with seven to eight years right now – NEC is looking at getting the durability up to 20 years, and have the battery out into the market in five years.
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indeed these are great news
we know all the way about batteries being too bulky and heavy
and unreliable in term of long useable period for example a battery deteriorated to certain level when it is being used for X years
of course even mechanical parts do have their optimum durability period but battery being supposely the ‘engine’ of the vehicle, it should stand longer than the already published numbers
and we are no talking 5-10 years. we should be talking about 20 years.
but another great idea, apart from onboard generator like those available on the fcx clarity
is the direct induce of power from .. lets say electrical gridline-roads
think about the maglev train and u kinda got the concept but unlike the maglev, we need to build roads just like what we have today due to complications of reasons like we dont go to one place all of us, and we have out own preference to stop here and there.
i dont want to live like a preprogrammed robot on a preprogrammed vehicle
dual carriage, single carriage, three way four way roads. we must have them.
the direct inducement of power must be mediumless so that the vehicles can steer to where ever they are steered by the drivers
currently the works are already in place where bunch of researchers managed to transfer electricity within the air but just at very near distance. millimeters.
for my idea to be successful, i figure we need transfer within 20-30cm from the gridline-road to the electrical machine in the engine bay
the cars dont need to be floated in the air like maglev train
we can have normal tires but only powered through mediumless direct injected power