Boston Power opening transportation battery division
It looks like Boston Power will try to do for electric vehicles what it did for laptops. The company developed the Sonata brand which recharges faster, packs more energy and last longer than "regular" laptop batteries. They are also safer. CEO Christina Lampe-Onnerud, founder of the young company, is also a battery researcher and re-engineered the laptop powerpack to take advantage of efficiency gains from re-sizing and re-shaping the individual cells, upgrading materials and eliminating parallel circuits paths in favor of series-only. The result is a battery that will keep your laptop humming for four hours at a time and not lose much in the way of energy capacity over a period of years. They will now take that experience and tackle the larger format batteries used for transportation at their newly expanded R&D lab in Westborough, MA.
They already have battery modules suitable for power-assisted bicycles and scooters that they are showcasing. Next on the list are power packs for hybrids and all-electric cars. Lampe-Onnerud believes that they have "only scratched the surface of lithium ion technology" and believes it will be the dominant chemistry for many years to come. She also believes that it may take a few years for the market to develop but is certain that it will happen. We hope she is right.
[Source: Xconomy Boston]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
rob 7:44PM (10/31/2008)
Given that at the moment the lithium cells available to mere mortals are either pilfered from DeWalt battery packs @ $90 for six 18650's, or are Chinese knockoffs of uncertain quality ordered either from ebay or factory-direct (the batteries from e-bike shops are almost universally assembled from Chinese cells.)
...There exists a very large "middle ground" of the market between those extremes for them to do well in.
Good luck, lord knows we hobbyists would love a source of reliable, easily accessible and reasonably priced cells & packs.
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