General Electric will invest $24 million in two initiatives to bolster hybrid and electric car technology, including a $4 million commitment to Think, the Norwegian electric car maker formerly owned by Ford. The Think Ox is the car company's latest concept vehicle—an all-electric five-seater small SUV, promising 125 miles of range on a charge.
Mercedes-Benz will launch an S-Class hybrid equipped with a lithium ion battery in 2009. Dr. Thomas Weber, who is responsible for research at Mercedes-Benz said, “What we have here is a groundbreaking key technology that is going to be a decisive factor for the future success of the automotive industry.”
Johnson Controls and Saft are opening a factory to produce advanced lithium ion batteries for cars in a sign that electric and next-generation hybrid vehicles are reaching a tipping point. The factory in Nersac, France will produce up to 5,000 battery packs a year for Daimler AG—for use in the Mercedes-Benz S-class series of luxury hybrids expected to roll out in 2010.
EnerDel's Ulrik Grape on the challenges of building lithium ion batteries, Japanese competition, and what cars we'll be driving in 2013.
One of the industry’s top contenders in the race to manufacture more powerful next-generation batteries for the auto industry has integrated a lithium ion battery into a Toyota Prius. EnerDel, based in Indianapolis, Ind., exhibited the research vehicle with the new battery pack at the International Electric Vehicle Symposium (EVS-23) in Anaheim, California.
From the first days when hybrids hit American roads in 2000, consumers have worried about expensive battery replacement costs. But reported cases of hybrid battery failure have been almost impossible to find. Suddenly, in the last couple of days, there were two posts in the HybridCars.com discussion forum from owners of first-generation hybrids with battery woes.
September 27, 2007
Today’s PHEVs vary widely in performance. Why? The answer is in the amount of energy they can store on-board the vehicle.
In the quest for a solution to the growing global transportation energy needs, plug-in hybrids have recently taken center stage. Plug-in hybrids, unlike the gas-electric hybrids currently on the market, can travel for extended ranges without using any gasoline. Yet, the emergence of plug-in hybrids depends on the viability of mass-manufactured lithium ion battery technologies. That technology may not be available for a decade or more, according to Dr. Menahem Anderman, a leading expert on advanced automobile batteries.
If you tried to get the same amount of energy from a household outlet as you get from a gasoline pump, it would take about nine days. Of course, it doesn’t take nine days to recharge an EV, because the efficiency of an EV allows the driver to put less energy in the “tank” and still receive an adequate charge.
One journalist after the next purports the same point about hybrid gas-electric cars: they are not worth the extra cost. The writers' lack of originality is only surpassed by their inability to get all the facts. When they proclaim that the extra cost of buying a hybrid will not be recouped in savings at the pump—as if they were the first person, rather than the thousandth, to "discover" a nefarious plot against American car buyers—the writer usually fails to consider tax credits, reduced maintenance, and historically excellent resale value.
