Volkswagen funds professorship of lithium-ion batteries in Germany
Will VW lead the plug-in hybrid pack in the future? The company seems to be giving it a go with the establishment of a donated Chair for Applied Material Sciences for Energy Storage and Energy Conversion at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität in Münster, Germany. The professorship will commence next year and will focus on batteries for hybrid vehicles, specifically lithium-ion batteries. As always, improved performance and reduced costs are the goal. Degussa AG, Chemetall GmbH and Volkswagen AG have funded the professorship for five years. Chemetall already supplies high-end lithium compounds and Degussa manufactures electrodes and separators as battery components.[Source: Volkswagen]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Howard Lee Harkness 8:57AM (10/17/2006)
"...specifically lithium-ion batteries."
Way too narrow a focus. Sounds a lot like somebody with a vested financial interest in Li-ion. Or maybe somebody with limited vision.
Much better would be general research into storage of electrical energy, which might lead to batteries, supercaps, or even some other as-yet-undiscovered technology with better safety, energy/weight, efficiency, and economy than currently available.
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