Amsterdam-headquartered global auto manufacturer Stellantis and South Korean battery maker LG Energy Solution announced a joint venture on October 18 to produce battery cells and modules for North America. Now Stellantis has today announced yet another battery production partnership, with Samsung SDI.
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StoreDot, an Israel-based electric vehicle battery startup, today announced that it will open an R&D innovation hub in the US to speed up the development of solid-state batteries.
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In today’s Electrek Green Energy Brief (EGEB):
In today’s Electrek Green Energy Brief (EGEB):
In the UK, two electric vehicle manufacturers, academics, and a battery analytics specialist company are collaborating on an electric vehicle battery research program designed to predict battery life span – and they say they’ve succeeded.
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Lithium-ion battery development and production is rapidly escalating worldwide, yet there’s no standard when it comes to battery designs, materials, and chemistries. And that affects the ability to recycle Li-ion batteries – a vital final stage of their life cycle. But this may be about to change in the US.
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In today’s Electrek Green Energy Brief (EGEB):
Zambian president-elect Hakainde Hichilema won a landslide victory in the country’s election last week, beating the incumbent, Edgar Lungu. Hichilema’s plan is to ramp up mining in particular to jump-start Zambia’s economy – and provide the rapidly growing electric vehicle battery industry with crucial cobalt and copper.
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Current US battery production falls woefully short in the face of rapidly growing demand for electric vehicle and storage batteries.
The US has only a small number of domestic, large battery manufacturing factories, including Tesla’s Gigafactory that operates in partnership with Japan’s Panasonic. And just last week, KORE Power announced it will build the first lithium-ion battery factory wholly owned by a US company, in Arizona.
Both innovation and domestic battery production needs to scale quickly and efficiently, and the battery skills gap, among other things, need to be tackled in order to do that. Electrek spoke with Dr. Greg Less, technical director at the University of Michigan Battery Lab, about what the US needs to do to meet that demand.
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During its “Tech Zone” online launch event, global battery maker CATL introduced its first-generation sodium-ion battery, as well as an AB solution that integrates both sodium-ion and lithium-ion cells into one pack. While this first generation of sodium-ion cells is not here to overtake traditional lithium-ion batteries, they do present a number of benefits for charging, maintaining energy, and helping to promote cleaner energy.
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Clean energy may mean less mining for coal, but it also means more mining for minerals such as cobalt for use in alloys and batteries, tellurium for solar cells and semiconductors, and germanium for transistors in electronic devices.
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In today’s Electrek Green Energy Brief (EGEB):
The European Commission (EC) and the Batteries European Partnership Association (BEPA) have announced a memorandum of understanding to research and develop battery technologies for production in Europe. The co-programmed partnership is being called BATT4EU, and it’s aimed at bringing value and competitiveness to the EU’s battery chain.
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This video tells the story of cobalt and its importance to batteries and electric cars.
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In today’s Electrek Green Energy Brief (EGEB):
The Biden administration is keen to boost battery manufacturing on home soil as soon as possible. But in case you didn’t notice, the Democrats and Republicans are at loggerheads in Congress on Biden’s huge infrastructure plan. So here are four steps the Department of Energy is going to take right now to boost EV and clean energy storage battery production in the US.
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Researchers at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia have figured out how to extract lithium, an essential part of electric vehicle batteries, from seawater in a more cost-effective way.
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Researchers at Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) have developed a lithium-metal, solid-state battery they claim can hold significantly more energy within the same volume of traditional lithium-ion batteries while charging in a fraction of the time. While this is welcomed news around a potentially world-changing technology, questions surrounding cost effective scalability remain uncertain.
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In today’s Electrek Green Energy Brief (EGEB):
California-headquartered green power solutions company Jackery is officially releasing the Explorer 1500 on April 5 – its largest solar generator yet. The company asked Electrek if we’d like to try it out, so Jackery sent me a review unit, and I happily put it to the test. Here’s what I found.
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Electric vehicle sales seem to be growing by the minute in the US. Although they still only have a tiny corner of the auto market cornered, astronomical valuations of industry leaders like Tesla offer a glimpse at the potential of a virtually nascent market. In order to bring costs down even further to entice consumers, the US has plans to amplify battery production on its home soil over the next decade. With global competitors miles ahead, does the US have the technology, or more importantly the resources, to gain ground in the EV battery market?
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Researchers from the Tokyo University of Science have taken another step in the ongoing quest to bring next-generation sodium-ion batteries to market. They have achieved a higher-energy density in sodium-ion batteries than in lithium-ion batteries.
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Michelin’s Movin’On Summit was held virtually last week, and five sustainable mobility companies won its Startup Challenge because they stood out as being able to move from “ambition to action.”
SK Innovation, a South Korean battery supplier for Volkswagen and Ford, said on Tuesday it will spend $727 million to build a second EV battery plant in the United States. Construction is expected to begin in July, with battery production slated to start in 2023.
