lithium is the game changing element.i know the stock has taken a beating of late, but i'm still faithful in the company and its future prospects. Besides, how often can you buy a lithium company who already has sales/destribution/prominant market share for $6? Look at it as an opportunity to add to your holdings at discount. No matter what the future holds, we know EVs will need lithium, esp as the article belows outlines what direction of batteries will evolve to, whether they be lithium ion and/or lithium vanadium...
Planar Energy has developed a game-changing technology for solid state batteries for electronics and automotive applications. Lithium ion battery technology has hit a wall - batteries need substantial cost reductions to be viable for energy demanding applications.
Planar's technology is superior to Li-Ion at less than half the cost per kWh, with three times the energy density. Solid state batteries replace the plastics, binders, powders and liquids of Li-Ion batteries with durable, nanostructured films.
More on Planar Energy later. The key to success in the take up of electric vehicles, big future users of some of the rare metals, and therefore of great interest to readers of this blog, is getting the technology of the powering batteries correct. “Range anxiety” is supposed to be a limiting factor in the public’s mind at present. Even the best Li-ion batteries at present only offer a range of about 100 miles. In practical everyday use, some percentage less will be achieved. Range anxiety dies with a battery range approaching 250 miles. Below, the definitive guide to EV batteries at the end of 2008. Though dated, it’s still worth the read. But we’ve moved on from November 2008.
The Hybrid Car Battery: A Definitive Guide
But just two years on and we stand on the threshold of a major breakthrough. The Lithium Vanadium battery is probably about to become the next generation battery pack for EVs. Higher voltage at lower cost by replacing the cathode.
JH: Where you have a problem with the batteries in the Volt or Leaf is with power production. They’re lower-voltage batteries. They’re around 3.2 or 3.3 volts, and they’re what are called ’10C’ batteries. An amp hour-rated battery can kick out 10 amps or charge at 10 amps all day and night without overheating or becoming damaged. At 10 amps of current and 3.2 or 3.3 volts, you’re looking at a 33-watt cell. That’s a reasonable amount of power, but it’s not outrageous.
If you look at a lithium-vanadium phosphate battery, it’s a 4.2-volt cell, but the battery itself is a 50C battery. That means the same amp hour-rated battery can kick out 50 amps of current for as long as it lasts. The advantage here is that it’s 50 amps of current times 4.2 volts. That’s 210 watts of power as opposed to 33 watts.
You’ve got a lithium-ion battery in both cases, but because of the addition of vanadium to the cathode in that battery, you’ve got something that can produce more than six times the power.
John Hykawy. Byron Capital Markets. Toronto.
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But further developments are also at hand. Graphene or nano carbon is likely to replace the currently used anode, and just last year Planar Energy located in Florida’s High Tech energy corridor near Orlando, came up with a new way of manufacturing the battery that’s a game changer. We haven’t seen anything yet.
The fundamental challenge of solid state batteries is that current fabrication methods don't scale to large format batteries because of the cost of vacuum deposition. Planar has developed an alternative, game changing deposition process and has demonstrated the ability to make nanostructured electrolyte and electrode materials with superior chemistries using this process.
More.
Planar touts new way to make solid-state electrodes and electrolytes
13-Aug-2010 20:30 GMT
Planar Energy, a 3-year-old start-up company in Orlando, FL, is using a high-throughput surface-deposition process to build solid-state electrolytes for thin-film lithium-ion batteries that in independent lab tests performed as well as the standard liquid electrolytes. The low-cost film-making method—a printing-type process that resembles airbrushing—can also produce cathode and anode materials layer by layer, said Planar founder and Chief Executive Officer Scott Faris.
The firm’s engineering team is now working to scale up its proprietary production process to larger volumes while maintaining the high purity of the inorganic film compounds. If Planar can successfully manufacture solid-state electrodes and electrolytes from multiple stacks of these films, the resulting batteries will be big enough to power laptops and consumer electronics—and not long thereafter, electric vehicles, Faris claimed. To that end, the U.S. Department of Energy's ARPA-E (Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy) stimulus grant program has recently awarded the company $4 million in matching commercialization R&D funds.
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Planar Energy’s new generation of inorganic solid state electrolyte and electrode materials combined with a proprietary manufacturing process (Streaming Protocol for Electroless Electrochemical Deposition, or SPEED) comprises a materials performance and fabrication breakthrough that overcomes the production and cost barriers to low-cost, solid state, large format batteries.
Our proprietary methodology will produce batteries that are superior to existing lithium-ion at less than half the cost per kilowatt-hour and with three times the energy density. These dramatic cost and performance improvements will move the automotive industry forward substantially on the path to make electric vehicles practical and affordable.
Good old Yankee ingenuity, if Floridians will forgive the mis-characterisation. Don’t write off America or the BEV yet.
More tomorrow.
Graeme Irvine, London.