DOE/ARPA-E and GM Sponsored Envia Systems More Than Doubles Energy Density for Lithium-Ion Batteries While Reducing the Cost by Half
February 29th, 2012“What does all of this mean for GM?
I have no idea. But if something really, really strange happens, it might make much more sense in hindsight.”
—Obama Fired GM’s CEO; What’s Stirring Behind the Black Curtain?
“The Manhattan Project, a project lasting roughly five years from start to finish, had cost $2.3 billion in 1945 dollars. A contemporary sum of about $26.8 billion: a tremendous amount. But here, a startling fact: The budget for the entire Manhattan Project was still billions of dollars less than the present day’s annual black budget. Every year, the United States spends more black dollars than it took to build the bomb.
In the few short years it took to build the bomb, and with the ensuing Cold War, the notion of having classified industries, multibillion-dollar secret budgets, legions of security-cleared personnel, and entire branches of science devoted to secret science went from being unthinkable to being so natural that few people even bothered questioning it.”
—Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon’s Secret World by Trevor Paglen
Via: Envia Systems (.pdf):
Envia Systems, a technology leader in high-?performance, low-cost lithium-ion energy storage solutions today announced test results that verify the company’s next-generation rechargeable battery has achieved the highest recorded energy density of 400 Watt-hours/kilogram (Wh/kg) for a rechargeable lithium-ion cell. When commercialized, this 400 Wh/kg battery is expected to slash the price of a 300-mile range electric vehicle by cutting the cost of the battery pack by more than 50 percent.
The testing of Envia’s next-generation lithium-ion battery was performed by the Electrochemical Power Systems Department at the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) in Crane, Ind., under the sponsorship of ARPA-E. Tests at various cycling rates at NSWC confirmed that Envia’s automotive battery cell demonstrated energy density between 378-418 Wh/kg for rates between C/3 to C/10 for a 45 Amp-hour (C/3) cell. Similar cells have been cycling in Envia’s test labs for over 300 cycles. NSWC Crane will also test these cells to validate cycling performance.
…
“In an industry where energy density tends to increase five percent a year, our achievement of more than doubling state-of-art energy density and lowering cost by half is a giant step towards realizing Envia’s mission of mass market affordability of a 300-mile electric vehicle,” said Envia Systems Chairman and CEO Atul Kapadia.
