Israel-based startup StoreDot has been making waves in the battery world for the past few years with its ‘ultra-fast charging battery’.

As we often point out, It’s hard to gauge the credibility of new battery technologies without hard data, but in the case of StoreDot, It is starting to get some massive backing from giant companies.

Today, British oil company BP announced that it invested $20 million in the startup. expand full story

For DIY enthusiasts in the green energy community, homemade lithium-ion battery packs have long been a holy grail. For everything from home solar energy storage to garage-built electric bicycles, go-karts and full-size EVs, lithium-ion batteries were once one of the most limiting factors for hobbyist and makers.

However, the last few years have seen an impressive upswing in availability of parts, tools and knowledge in the DIY lithium-ion battery pack space. This has led to increasing opportunities for creative DIYers to shuck the bonds of traditional suppliers of expensive Li-ion battery packs and instead develop their own custom batteries for a variety of projects and applications. expand full story

Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL), China’s largest automotive battery maker, has been making strides in the past few years thanks to the country’s rapid deployment of electric vehicles.

The company is now reportedly aiming to become the world’s largest automotive battery maker with a new factory financed by an initial public offering (IPO) valued at $2 billion. expand full story

The two former Tesla executives that broke out on their own to build a battery gigafactory in Europe have just secured backing from Volkswagen through their Scania division.

The two companies will develop and commercialize battery cell technology for heavy commercial vehicles at their facilities. expand full story

Samsung SDI has been pushing to carve itself a bigger space in the EV industry and it has been using auto shows to showcase their latest battery products.

They are doing it again at the 2018 Detroit Motor Show this week with new batteries that they claim will increase electric car range and charging capacity. expand full story

The California Independent System Operator (CAISO) – the group that manages 80% of the electricity used in California – has begun showing utility-scale batteries charging and discharging into the power grid via their website.

By resolution, due to a natural gas emergency, the State of California requested large-scale battery based energy storage projects be attached to the grid at the end of 2016, early 2017. Now we get to watch the systems – some that we covered – do their job.

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Bosch is the world’s largest automotive supplier and it is heavily investing in electric vehicle components to support the industry’s transition to electric vehicles.

But there’s one important electric car component that Bosch is not making: battery cells.

The company now says that it is considering a significant investment to start producing batteries. expand full story

Battery costs have been falling fast for years now, but commodity prices of several key raw materials have been increasing recently and some predict that the supply won’t be able to keep up with the demand.

Now Hyundai, which is currently trying to build its battery supply chain for upcoming electric vehicles, predicts that battery costs could stop falling starting in 2020. expand full story

In the latest battery breakthrough claim of the week, researchers from the University of Waterloo released a new paper claiming a breakthrough involving the use of negative electrodes made of lithium metal.

They claim that it has the potential to “dramatically increase battery storage capacity,” which could triple the range of electric vehicles. expand full story