Lithium Ion

If the US would like to stop importing 80 percent of its lithium, mainly from China, and if Bolivian sources don't come through, it looks like there is a big domestic opportunity: Wyoming. Having an ample domestic supply would bring down the price of lithium, which could mean electric vehicles ...

The mystery of potentially dangerous lithium ion batteries continues to hang over sales of vehicles using this technology. Experts who recently testifyied before the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said that failure of the technology has slowed development of electric cars and ...

Toyota has never been a big fan of lithium ion batteries, and has a plan in place to replace them with solid-state batteries that are three-to-four times more powerful. Toyota will commercialize solid-state batteries around 2020 and lithium air batteries – which offer a fivefold increase ...

Lithium-ion battery maker EnerDel is trying to broaden its sales into the secondary-battery-storage market as a way to help give the struggling company a second life of its own. The company says it's working with ATC New Technologies to co-market and sell lithium-ion battery systems for ...

The bankruptcy proceedings for A123 Systems are moving relatively smoothly toward completion, and it looks like Wanxiang America Corp. and Navitas Systems LLC should complete the transactions within the guidelines of the court-ordered asset purchase agreements by February 1, 2013. Chinese parts ...

Bankrupt lithium-ion battery maker A123 Systems may have gained a new owner, but will lose a lot of money in the pending sale to China-based Wanxiang Group, Reuters reports, citing an unidentified US Energy Department official. Specifically, A123, which filed for bankruptcy in October, will ...

Why Not Improve The Cheap Chemistry? When General Motors launched its pioneering two-seat EV1 in 1997, its batteries were "advanced" lead acid (PbA). That means they were big, heavy, had low energy density and a limited life. But it was the best available chemistry at the time. That first EV1's ...

Toyota owns part of the company, but Suzuki gets the battery. That's the gist of Denso's development of a lithium-ion battery pack that is designed especially for cars with fuel-saving stop-start systems. The 5.5-pound battery pack weighs less because it can capture regenerative energy from when ...

Until another element is preferred or discovered, lithium will be the foundation for electric and hybrid vehicle batteries for the foreseeable future. It is an expensive part of the battery packs being installed and is keeping sticker prices fairly high. The price of lithium, the lightest metal, ...

For the third-generation hybrid system powering the Fusion Hybrid and C-MAX Hybrid, Ford expects to be using about 500,000 pounds a year less of expensive and uncommon rare earth metals. Reduction of rare earth metals in the lithium-ion batteries and the hybrid system's electric machines lowers ...