The smash hit IPO of lithium ion battery maker A123 Systems is sending waves of euphoria through the clean tech and plug-in car market. Mass.-based A123 Systems is now worth nearly $2 billion—indicating huge investor confidence in the future of electric cars, plug-in hybrids, and the batteries that make them go. Yet, A123 has yet to make a profit and faces significant hurdles to mass commercial success.
As automakers race toward bringing hybrid and electric cars into the mainstream, environmentalists worry about the ability to properly recycle the batteries that power those cars. Most industry analysts believe that we are a decade or more away from needing to recycle nickel or lithium auto batteries in significant volumes. Yet, the first lithium battery recycling plants are already being established.
The growth of hybrid and electric cars will greatly depend on the availability of next-generation auto batteries. In a move to secure its supply of lithium ion batteries for future hybrids, Toyota will start buying batteries from Sanyo, according to Nikkei.
What goes for political corruption is also great advice for understanding the future of gas-electric and plug-in cars: Follow the money. Consider the new round of $69 million that A123Systems, one of the leading US manufacturers of advanced auto batteries, has raised to expand its facilities in Massachusetts and Michigan.
The next generation of hybrid and electric cars depends on lithium ion batteries—but the world’s biggest supply of lithium is controlled by a socialist country with no great love for America.
A group of US battery companies teamed up this week to boost American manufacturing of lithium ion batteries. The new alliance aims to compete with Asian companies that currently dominate the lithium ion battery market. The newly formed National Alliance for Advanced Transportation Battery Cell Manufacture will create one or more manufacturing and prototype development centers in the United States.
The automotive world appears well on its way to a lithium-powered future. Yet, as the future of lithium continues to grow brighter, some skeptics are presenting concerns that might give pause to those who see this metal as the ideal path away from petroleum-fueled transportation.
We’re probably showing our age when we remember Fernwood 2 Night, the 1977 mock talk-show spinoff of classic 1970s comedy series Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. But it wasn’t until we found one of the old clips that we realized: Good lord, the show’s writers anticipated the Tesla Roadster battery by at least 30 years!
San Francisco taxi drivers are providing solid information about the outer reaches of hybrid battery life. At a recent Ford Motor Company event, Paul Gillespie, San Francisco Taxicab Commission president, said some of his city’s Ford Escape hybrid taxis had passed 300,000 miles of use with no problems.
The newest version of the electric Smart, set for demonstration projects in the US and Germany, will use lithium ion batteries that should give the car close to 100 miles of range.
