Battery-changing concept for EVs pitched for China

An electric vehicle experiment in Japan that addresses the problem of keeping EVs charged to allow for longer, worry-free travel could be done in Beijing too, a recent car battery forum showed.

In Japan’s model station, a driver does not have to alight from the vehicle to charge the EV, and there are no attendants dragging cords to plug into the car chassis.

Instead, a mechanical arm pulls out a spent battery and inserts a fully charged one back in. The entire process takes no more than five minutes.
Michal Vakrat Wolkin, global head of battery technologies at Better Place, the same company that set up the Japanese project, shared this at the 2nd EV Lithium-ion Battery Forum held in Beijing last week.

[Source & Read More: Ecoseed]

Views from Rincon Lithium and Western Lithium

Some see lithium as the oil of the 21st century: it is crucial to power advanced electric vehicles. Lithium carbonate resources are large but the production is limited to just a handful of companies in two different locations. This raises issues of security of supply amongst many within the automotive industry. Many players fear that they will face increasing prices from lithium suppliers.

This is the background to the two presentations from Rincon Lithium and Western Lithium during the EV Li-ion Battery Forum last week. They wanted to alleviate these fears and to explain that reserves and prices will not prevent EV based business from penetrating the automotive market.

[Source & Read More: Cars21]

China offers subsidies to encourage use of EVs

Millions of cars and other vehicles that now roam the streets in China testify to the country’s economic growth, but the Chinese government is pushing for more electric vehicles to offset the anticipated rise in emissions brought by the boom in the vehicle industry.

In November 2009, China surpassed the United States as the world’s largest automotive market when sales of cars and sports utility vehicles exceeded the 1 million mark. This figure is expected to rise in the coming years.

Xiao Chengwei, a member of an expert panel in the Ministry of Science and Technology’s Alternative Fuel Vehicles Program, estimates that China will have 130 million cars by 2020 and over 300 million by 2030.

[Source & read more: Ecoseed]

Views from REVA, LuxGen, Jaguar and Volkswagen

Just recently, China has overtaken Japan as second biggest economy in the world. In the EV market, the country clearly intends to play in the top league as well and maybe even take the lead. Indeed, the Chinese automotive sector and market are growing fast and EVs have a real chance of securing an important share.

Mr. Xiao Chengwei (肖成伟) from the Tianjin Institute of Power Sources underlined in his presentation titled “Overview on power batteries for electric vehicles in China” that China is taking the move to electric vehicles very seriously and that the country’s approach is holistic: they look at policies, standards and evaluation technologies for fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEV), hybrid electric vehicles (HEV) and battery electric vehicles (BEV) while fervently persuing the development of key components such as electric control systems, motor drive systems and control units, as well as battery and management systems at the same time.

[Source & read more: Cars21]

Experts discuss EV Recharging Infrastructure

The various presentations and ensuing discussions during the EV Li-ion Battery Forum shed light on infrastructure requirements and their implications for the industry from different perspectives:

The OEM’s perspective

Standards: state-of-play, needs and challenges

The utility’s perspective

The software provider’s perspective

[Source & Read More: Cars21]

China accelerates electric vehicle dream

China’s electric vehicle (EV) market is in pole position to become the first nation in the world to realize the EV era, Tony Chen, China Regional Manager with SUD-Chemie, said at a forum in Beijing on Tuesday.

“China can no longer depend on traditional energy for its rapid growth and the nation’s oil dependency exceeded 50 percent, so EV development in China is a nationally strategic choice for the country’s energy security,” Chen said at the 2nd EV Li-ion Battery Forum 2010.

[Source & read more: China Daily]

An expert perspective on li-ion battery market

Priya Tabaddor is the Business Development Manager and leads the Large Battery business at Underwriters Laboratories globally. In the run-up to the 2nd EV Li-ion Battery Forum 2010, she agreed to share her insights gained from long years of experience in the field and to give her perspective on the future of the lithium-ion battery market.

In Ms Tabaddor’s view, battery technology based on lithium-ion chemistry is currently the technology of choice for the industry as it offers the best available combination in terms of energy density, size, weight and charge efficiencies. Compared to nickel metal hydride batteries used most recently in EVs, lithium-ion based batteries offer better energy density and charging efficiencies. However, safety, reliability and long-term durability remain concerns. Several studies have shown how internal short circuits within the battery can result in thermal runaway whereby chemical reactions triggered in the cell exacerbate heat release, potentially resulting in a fire of significant consequences.

[Source & Read More: Cars21]

Nissan Motor plans to lease Electric Vehicles Batteries

Nissan Motor Co., seeking to lead the emerging market for electric cars, said it expects most customers will lease rather than buy lithium ion batteries packs for the electric vehicles.

Nissan to sell electric car for less than $44,300. Nissan’s Leaf will be cheaper than Mitsubishi Motor Corp.’s (7211.TO) i-MiEV electric model, which is priced at around Y4.6 million.

Leases will account for the vast majority of lithium ion batteries for electric cars such as Nissan’s Leaf, Jonathan Dixon, the Yokohama, Japan-based company’s business-development manager, said in an interview.

[Source & read more: Tesla Roadster Sport]

Do Electric Vehicles mean you should invest in Coal?

The upcoming crop of electric cars is impacting Wall Street analysts and not just because of potential car sales. Motley Fool, an investment website, advises people to invest in coal because zero-emission vehicles such as the upcoming Nissan Leaf will plug into the national electric grid, which is powered largely by coal. While the money men think coal is a good investment, that doesn’t mean renewable resources aren’t making gains.

It will be a long time before wind and solar resources power our electric vehicle fleet — some might say never — and each EV purchased adds the equivalent of a new house to the electric grid, which necessitates more electricity production. This means burning more coal and spewing more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is inevitable, right?

Not necessarily.

[Source & read more: cars.com]

US Government too focused on Electric Vehicles

The U.S. government is going too far in backing electric vehicles at the cost of other advanced vehicle technologies, the CEO of a top supplier said today.

BorgWarner chairman and CEO Tim Manganello told the Center for Automotive Research’s Management Briefing Seminars that policymakers were focused on electric vehicles “ignoring” other technologies.

“The U.S. government is going a bit too far in trying to dictate the powertrain technologies of the future,” Manganello told auto industry insiders. “It’s difficult to compete globally when governments try to pick the winning technologies and the direction changes from administration to administration.”

[Source & read more: The Detroit News]