Electric Vehicles
Battery Manufacturers Get Charged
No electric vehicle is going anywhere without a battery, and there has been a spate of developments on that front.
The first Chevrolet Volt battery moves through the assembly process at the General Motors Brownstown Battery plant in Brownstown Township, Mich. (Photo By: Jeffrey Sauger for General Motors)
General Motors announced that it has built the first advanced lithium-ion battery for a mass-market EV. Ed Whitacre, GM’s chairman and CEO, called it “a critical step in bringing the Chevrolet Volt to market.”
The pack consists of multiple linked battery modules and more than 200 battery cells. GM plans to start shipping batteries this spring to a Detroit plant, where they will be installed in production vehicles.
Two companies already selling EVs have signed new deals with battery manufacturers.
Fisker Automotive will get battery systems for its Karma plug-in hybrid from A123 Systems. The Karma is expected to hit the streets later this year, and Henrik Fisker, CEO of his namesake company, said A123 will be able to “meet our performance needs and rapidly scale to our production volume.”
Tesla Motors has reached a deal with Panasonic to get lithium-ion batteries for its EVs. “Our collaboration with Panasonic will accelerate the development of next generation EV cells, enabling Tesla to further improve our battery pack performance,” said J.B. Straubel, chief technology officer at Tesla, which already has about 900 vehicles on the road.
Finally, Japan’s Hitachi said it has developed its first lithium-ion batteries for PHEVs. Hitachi expects to send samples to automakers in the spring.
Tags: Electric Vehicles