EnerDel plans to sell affordable, lithium-ion battery in 2 years
EnerDel says they can make a lithium-ion battery for electric cars for just $1,500. That price for lithium-ion batteries is a lot lower than any price we have seen. Enerdel says it's hard to say right now how much they will cut prices but it should cost less or even half the price of traditional nickel-metal hydride batteries. The EnerDel battery chemistry is similar to Altair Nanotechnologies and has a lower operating temperature than A123 Systems.
Enerdel says you will start to see the batteries in cars by September 2009. USABC (United States Council for Automotive Research) in collaboration with the DOE awarded EnerDel $6.5 M contract to develop the battery for cars. Enerdel has already completed phase 1 of the 3-phase, 18-month program. Ulrik Grape, Chief Executive Officer of EnerDel says "we expect to deliver results that will meet and exceed the battery performance requirements of USABC and the DOE."
EnerDel is a member of the EDTA.
[Source: CNET]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
pedmac 10:55AM (9/19/2007)
i understand that delphi and itochu of japan own Ener1?? i this true
Reply
Mike Z 10:23AM (9/19/2007)
80% owned by a OTCBB company that has a $150 million market cap and a stock price around $0.35----I call Pump-and-Dump Scam!
Reply
lonnie 4:33PM (7/18/2008)
question states 1500 for battery .. ahhhh how many volts ?? how many amps ? etc etc etc ...lonnie
Tim 10:35AM (9/19/2007)
The Enerdel design looks VERY impressive.
http://enerdel.com/content/view/104/87/
It has the advantages of Altairnano's and A123s designs and yet can be more easily and cheaply mass-produced. Gentlemen, we have a new player at the table. Ante-up and let's play!
Reply
jcwinnie 10:36AM (9/19/2007)
http://www.homevideos.com/freezeframes6/animalhouse347.jpeg
Price War!
Reply
Tim 11:00AM (9/19/2007)
Here's more info on Ener1:
http://www.ener1.com/pro.html
They seem to have all the ducks and the ability to put them in a row.
Reply
Phil L. 11:01AM (9/19/2007)
As always, my skeptical side starts to react whenever a product - any product - appears that claims remarkable advantages that are to be offered at some point in the future, without complete, independent verification.
That said, the EV battery market is ripe for some serious competition that can finally bring a technically advanced, widely available, readily affordable battery solution to fruition. So I welcome their efforts and hope to hear more good news from them soon!
Reply
GoodCheer 11:16AM (9/19/2007)
I don't know much about international business, but if it were owned by Delphi wouldn't it not have it's own ticker symbol?
Reply
GoodCheer 11:19AM (9/19/2007)
And as far as external verification, I would think that a 7 figure contract with USABC would be pretty darn hard to get if all you have to offer is hot air.
Reply
Tim 12:20PM (9/19/2007)
Some people have to be run over BY the train BEFORE they can believe that there IS a train because they lack the imagination and in fact fear the ramifications as to why the rails are there.
These people are a testament as to why natural selection and evolution are good and necessary.
Reply
Kent Beuchert 1:10PM (9/19/2007)
The USABC doesn't throw money around lightly, ad this is not the first battery performance goal that EnerDel has acheived using this technology. They have successfully completed Phase 1 and now move to actually commercialize the product.
Reply
grimmex 1:23PM (9/19/2007)
So.... what do they mean by "EV Batteries"? Considering that the best price on LiFePO batteries that I could find is $7400 for a 14.63 KWh pack (@70v... which is pretty weak), I would be terribly interested in what *size* of battery pack they're talking about. But neither this article, nor their website has any such details.
I'm not going to wait around for some vapourware to appear before doing my EV conversion. I'm going to go with what's available now, and maybe when the batteries need to be replaced in a few years, I'll look into this company again... if they still exist that is.
Reply
Bill 3:52PM (9/19/2007)
Yep, we don't know what capacity, at what voltage.
And the big question remains:
how much will a PHEV-sized (e.g. Volt @ 16 kWh, 300V?) battery pack based on this technology cost in 2009?
>$7400 for a 14.63 KWh pack (@70v... which is pretty weak)
Reply
TIMMAH! 4:49PM (9/19/2007)
I'll believe it when I see it on the shelves at Costco...
Reply
GoodCheer 7:05PM (9/19/2007)
#11 & #12. They list four battery cells on their page, and talk about their packaging (which I would read as pack-building) services. The cell options are
1.8 Ah @ 2.5V = 4.5 Wh
5.0 Ah @ 2.5V = 12.5 Wh
2.0 Ah @ 3.6V = 7.2 Wh
5.0 Ah @ 3.6V = 18.0 Wh
So to get a 15 kWh pack you would need
3333, 1200, 2083 or 833 cells respectively.
If you wanted a system running at 360V (which would keep currents and thus IIR losses small), you could run (23 or 9) strings of 144 of the first two, or (21 or 8) strings of 100 of the second two types of cells to build your pack.
For instance.
Reply
OhmExcited 8:00PM (9/19/2007)
Aren't competitors a big pain in the butt. We win.
Reply
Tim 8:59PM (9/19/2007)
OhmExcited - I agree! I just love a good free market horse race where the consumer always wins!
That is as long as the gov't doesn't screw it up by picking a winner with our tax money. I'm thinking Corn Ethanol...
Reply
AES 9:11PM (9/19/2007)
I've posted this on the other news sites covering the Enerdel story:
With regards to Enerdel and specific energy, their site has a figure showing the relative mass and volume of a conventional NiMH pack for HEVs compared with that of a hypothetical pack built using Enerdel cells. If you assume that this is a pack from something like a Prius, the NiMH cells can hold ~45Wh/kg. So this 36kg NiMH pack must hold 1.62 Wh. If the Enerdel pack holds the same amount of energy using only 23kg,
(1620Wh)/(23kg)= ~70Wh/kg.
That's far below A123 (108Wh/kg and above), and even below Altair (85Wh/kg). However, given the extremely poor electrical conductivity of the titanium anode, and thus the extremely poor voltage (2.5V), this really isn't that surprising.
Reply
AES 9:19PM (9/19/2007)
Another point, however, is that every article I've read is assuming that EnerDel is referring to its lithium titanate battery, versus its hard carbon design. The company doesn't explain how different these two chemistries are in terms of performance, but the HC cell has a much better voltage (3.6V), and is made of cheaper material than titanium.
Reply
AES 10:15PM (9/19/2007)
The CNET article also mistakenly refers to A123's cells as "lithium potassium". They're lithium iron phosphate.
Reply