• 31Mar

    Daimler said it will not give up independent battery R & D

    battery news 1 Comment

    Although Mercedes-Benz were BYD electric hand for technical cooperation, but co-production model mainly for the Chinese market, Daimler will remain an independent company in the development of the field of battery production. The industry believes that cooperation with Mercedes-Benz and BYD still on the direction for further communication.

    Blue Mercedes-Benz in China to promote efficiency strategy to protect the environment, some foreign engineers, said: “This collaboration, BYD, and Mercedes-Benz will present their talents, the advantage is BYD battery technology, while Mercedes-Benz is the electrical architecture of the car. “Learned, if both R & D center should be established primarily for research and battery technology development front, but DaimlerChrysler will also be undertaken simultaneously Ziji battery R & D, two courses will be parallel.

    The industry believes that “cooperation between the two adversaries strong need to keep things running.” Strategic environmental performance of the blue Mercedes-Benz is very advanced and defined the zero-emission drive “way of development, including the smart fortwo has been published, including such series of pure electric vehicles and fuel cell vehicles Fuel announcement. BYD is the world leader in battery technology, one of BYD in December 2008 launched the first dual mode electric vehicle F3DM, will soon launch electric cars e6 and the end of the year in the United States USA. Last year, in May, BYD has also signed an MOU with the public, agreed to explore aspects of electric propulsion in the car have become partners, but the chairman of VW Winterkorn revealed that the public remains BYD Lithium Battery testing has not yet decided to use.

    1st of this month, Germany’s Daimler and BYD has announced that the two parties signed the joint development of electric cars of the memorandum of understanding to jointly develop electric cars in the field of new energy vehicles, and implement the technology center in China to work together development, design and testing of electric vehicles and co-create a new brand.

    Tags: , ,

  • 31Mar

    Umicore to invests EUR60M in battery material production

    battery news No Comments

    Specialty materials group Umicore will more than triple its annual output of materials needed for rechargeable batteries used in hybrid and electric vehicles by 2013, anticipating a surge in demand.

    The group said on Wednesday it would invest 60 million euros ($80.56 million) to expand its cathode material production. It would ramp up production capacity at its existing operations in South Korea and China and would develop a new site in Japan.

    The investment would focus on further development and production of newer type cathode materials, which the group said will be used increasingly for notebook PCs and batteries in hybrid and electric vehicles.

    Electric vehicles may not sell worldwide in large numbers for some years, but Chief Executive Marc Grynberg said tightening emissions legislation and government support for green technology meant automakers’ focus would increasingly shift to zero-emissions vehicles.

    “You don’t need a huge number of cars to justify the commitment we’re making,” Grynberg told reporters at a news conference.

    “What we have in mind is penetration of three to five percent of passenger cars in the next five years,” he said.

    Tags: , ,

  • 30Mar

    Update BIOS to resolve false positive issues battery LG laptop Win7

    laptop news No Comments

    Beginning in February, when a user reports that their laptop after upgrading to Windows 7 will always be recalled to replace the battery, even if the new batteries so. The survey, Microsoft said, Windows will detect the battery completely normal by 7, the problem is the battery or laptop users. Recently, Microsoft has some of this problem is a solution for laptops LG.

    Microsoft KB981200 wrote “some improvement for LG laptop Windows 7 meter displays the battery system following warning message:” Please consider replacing battery. Even with the new battery, Windows 7 also display this fast. “Microsoft says the problem due to firmware LG certain portable system (BIOS) of a code defect, such as series R500.

    Windows 7 to add a testing tool based on battery circuits and firmware to evaluate the overall performance of the battery, calculating the percentage of degradation. The overall performance of the battery if the user is only 40% of the plant, and then Windows 7 will be recalled to replace the battery.

    LG laptops in part, the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) firmware is not properly initialized, can not use the method for BIF-capacity Battery proper design. Therefore, to assess the state of battery design capacity of the battery meter windows will be much larger than the actual capacity, so that the battery is fully charged is difficult to reach the rated capacity of 40% Windows 7 will always remember to replace the battery. The above version of Windows 7 in the installation of six would come.

    Tags: , ,

  • 30Mar

    Coda’s battery joint venture piles on $100M

    battery news 2 Comments

    Electric carmaker Coda Automotive Inc. and a partner have secured a nearly $300 million line of credit for the production of lithium-ion batteries at a facility in Tianjin, China, the company said Tuesday.

    The automotive battery plant, which was completed in September, is the joint venture of Coda, a Santa Monica start-up, and Lishen Power Battery, a lithium-ion battery maker based in Tianjin, the sixth largest city in China.

    Coda Chief Executive Kevin Czinger said that the $294 million line of credit from Bank of Tianjin Joint-Stock Co. Ltd. was secured this month after the two partners put an additional $100 million in the joint venture.

    Coda’s undisclosed portion of the $100 million equity injection came from remaining capital on hand and additional capital raised from its existing investors. Among its investors are Piper Jaffray Cos., clean technology investment firm Angeleno Group LLC and former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson.

    The vehicle, also called the Coda, is expected to cost in “the low $30,000s” after state and local subsidies, Czinger said. That would be similar to what GM’s forthcoming Chevrolet Volt electric sedan is expected to cost after tax credits. The Coda is expected to have a range of between 90 and 120 miles on a single charge.

    Coda expects to deliver 14,000 of the compact sedans between the fourth quarter and the end of next year despite its lack of a U.S. final assembly plant. Czinger said two California cities are vying to be the site of the plant, where the battery would be installed in the chassis, also to be built in China.

    The 1 million-square-foot battery facility in Tianjin, northwest of Shanghai, has gone through manufacturing test runs and is on schedule to meet the company’s production goals, Czinger said. The company eventually wants to build a battery plant in the United States.

    Tags: , ,

  • 29Mar

    Sharp’s most advanced thin-film solar battery plant put into operation

    battery news No Comments

    Japan’s Sharp Corporation announced on March 29 that the company’s located in Sakai City, Osaka, thin-film solar battery plant was formally put into operation. Sharp’s factory located in the parent company, and as the “green line”, sought through its own production technology and the accumulation of skills to meet growing world demand for solar batteries. The plant is used in the generation thin-film silicon on glass substrate production process, using the large size of 1000mm × 1400mm glass substrate production of thin-film silicon solar batteries. Production engineering simple, cost-competitive high, reducing the use of silicon to crystalline silicon solar batteries 1%. The factory’s annual production capacity of 160MW / year.

    Tags: ,

  • 29Mar

    Toyota Will Raise Stake in Panasonic Battery Venture

    battery news No Comments

    According to Bloomberg, Toyota Motor Corp. will increase its stake in a hybrid-car-battery joint venture with Panasonic Corp. to more than 80.5 percent from the current 60 percent, Nikkei English News said, without citing anyone.

    Toyota will purchase shares from Panasonic and also buy as much as 15 billion yen ($162 million) in new stock. And Chinese regulators asked Panasonic to lower its stake in the venture as a condition for allowing the acquisition of Sanyo Electric Co..

    Tags: , ,

  • 28Mar

    China achieves major breakthroughs in battery grade lithium carbonate production technology

    battery news No Comments

    In a global perspective, the core development of new energy vehicles, a battery power and motive power batteries, including lithium iron phosphate cathode materials power battery for the application of the most favored, while that the lithium iron phosphate is an essential raw material in carbonate grade lithium battery.

    Currently, the global lithium industry, a high degree of concentration, with production concentrated in SQM, FMC and Chemetall three hands of three companies have a breakthrough in lithium brine to talk about the latest technology , completely close their respective ore mining production line of lithium. Benefits Technology Lithium Brine, a great success and the monopoly three companies have shown the total share of world market lithium-around Qi Cheng.

    Lithium Resources in China as a great country, proved reserves and mineral resources of lithium ranks second worldwide, mainly distributed in Tibet, Qinghai Salt Lake in two places, which essentially proved Qinghai 21.08 million tonnes of lithium chloride, the first in the country, the country’s total proven reserves of over 90% of world resources of lithium salt 1 / 3. Qinghai Salt Lake have significant resources reserves of high grade features.

    Although our country is rich in Salt Lake, but because the internal lithium brine to discuss the technology has not been given a substantive breakthrough, none of these methods to achieve a comprehensive and rational capacity production of lithium carbonate is still available in the main ore of lithium. At present, the internal lithium battery is engaged in the development of the mining company in the brine CITIC Guoan, Tibet Mining, Salt Lake Potash, Salt Lake Group, etc., at this stage can be extracted directly from a brine industrial grade lithium carbonate, but can not not extract directly the degree of lithium carbonate to form the actual production is lower.

    In September 2009, the first use of China with an annual production of 2,500 tonnes of brine lithium battery grade production line for carbonate to commence operations in Jiangxi Xinyu, put into production within six months of production and sales of more than 1.3 thousand tons, success in achieving stability in mass production. Construction side Jiangxi Feng Li Company Limited is the profound transformation of lithium products, the leading companies in lithium and lithium-butyl and other high technology value-added and high commodity sectors lithium long-term leadership. Jiangxi Feng after long-term research technology, became the first company to master successfully extracted directly from the battery of quality basic brine technology companies lithium carbonate, is also the first company to be brine Lithium technology, businesses in industrial production.

    Jiangxi Feng-depth through the purification of the brine, except for potassium, sodium, boron, sulfur and other residual impurities, the direct production of lithium-quality carbonate products, while reducing processing costs with investments in expanding small-scale features of speed, Jiangxi Gan-feng in 2010 the year to expand production scale carbonate grade of lithium to 4,000 tonnes / year more and more major manufacturers in the country carbonate grade lithium battery should be brought within three years of 10,000 tonnes / production capacity this year to become the world’s first battery-grade lithium carbonate manufacturers.

    Jiangxi Feng first brine as raw material for battery grade lithium production line carbonate into service, not only managed to fill the void of domestic technology, marking the technological level of industry of the Li China ranks the world leader, but also for domestic production of lithium battery materials downstream of the area to provide comprehensive support and technical material, and enhancing our overall competitiveness of lithium industrial chain, promoting the ‘Chinese industry power lithium and use of green energy future development.

    Tags: ,

  • 28Mar

    GM aims low cost battery tech

    battery news No Comments

    Batteries for the next generation Chevrolet Volt and Vauxhall Ampera will be developed to reduce costs, rather than increase performance or range, according to one of GM’s leading battery experts.

    LoGrasso, leading GM battery engineer pointed out that reducing the size of the battery pack for the next generation Volt and other future GM electric and hybrid vehicles was a target. He also admitted that his team were hard at work finding cheaper materials to make the battery pack and increase their efficiency or ‘energy density’ to reduce size and weight. The battery pack of the first Volt/Ampera is said to take up 110 litres of space.

    The first generation Chevrolet Volt is set to go on sale in the US at the end of the year, while the mechanically identical Opel Ampera will hit showrooms at the end of 2011. Right-hand drive Vauxhall versions arrive in March 2012.

    Meanwhile, Vauxhall insiders say that a decision on whether to build all European Amperas at the company’s Ellesmere Port plant in Cheshire is still a year away.

    However the UK is tipped to be the biggest market for the car in Europe and “logic says you’d build it in the biggest market” according to a well placed source.

    Building the car in Ellesmere Port is also likely to lead to a nearby plant being set up to make the battery packs.

    Tags: ,

  • 26Mar

    BAE Systems developing hydrogen fuel cell buses

    battery news No Comments

    BAE Systems Company in March 25, 2010 announced that the United States, Southern California Area Transportation Authority to develop new marketing fuel cell hydrogen buses to check the feasibility of the technology of fuel cells. For the U.S. Department of Transportation, CALSTART, the California Air Resources Board and the California South Coast Air Quality Management Agency funding.

    According to the U.S. Fuel buses with hydrogen battery plans to develop public transport vehicles will be powered by Ballard Power Systems supplied FCvelocity-HD6 module fuel cell engine, combined BAE Systems series hybrid electric propulsion systems Management of Energy to promote the 40 buses feet long. The bus will be launched on December 2011.

    Tags: ,

  • 26Mar

    The Mall Luton recycles battery for shoppers

    battery news No Comments

    Every year, the average UK household disposes of more than 21 batteries as part of their general waste. This translates to over 22 tonnes of waste batteries sent to landfill annually. With experts predicting that the UK will run out of landfill space in the next few years, increasing battery recycling rates is a crucial way of trying to reverse this trend.

    The Mall Luton is to trial an end-of-life battery recycling scheme for shoppers. Teaming up with battery manufacturer Varta and recycling provider BatteryBack, it will provide a collection point in the centre for visitors to dispose of their old batteries from the 1st February. The trial has been designed to coincide with the UK’s launch of the Batteries Directive, a new EU-wide ruling that imposes strict targets on the manufacturing, collection and recycling of batteries.

    The Batteries Directive aims to cut down on the 600 million waste batteries that end up in landfill each year, and to help consumers play their part in Luton, an end-of-life battery collection point will be placed in The Mall shopping centre. To encourage take up of the scheme, which will be rolled out in Malls across the UK if successful, Varta will be providing free batteries to the first 1,000 people who visit the centre to recycle their old ones.

    Lavinia Holland, Marketing Manager at The Mall Luton is keen to stress the importance of the scheme: “The UK is lagging behind its European neighbours with regards to battery recycling. The key to improving recycling rates here is making sure households have easily accessible drop-off points, so that’s why we will be placing highly visible collection points throughout the centre. Our shoppers in Luton have always been very supportive of our recycling campaigns in the past, and I’m sure we will have the same success this time around.”

    The batteries recycling trial forms part of The Mall’s EnviroMall initiative, a commitment to reducing the impact of its shopping centres on the environment. It comes on the back of the Come Home for Christmas campaign, which helped raise over £10,000 for the charity Missing People by recycling old mobile phones. The scheme is also being supported by BatteryBack, one of the largest suppliers of collection and recycling for the coming directive.

    Tags: ,

« Previous Entries