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To speed along the success of the electric car, improvements in battery chemistry will matter as much as the price of oil. Batteries are now "part of the clean-tech boom, with all the dewy and righteous credibility of thin-film solar and offshore windmills," Seth Fletcher asserts in Bottled Lightning: Superbatteries, Electric Cars, and the New Lithium Economy. Righteous? Surely. Credible? Maybe. As Mr. Fletcher tells it, the history of batteries over the past 100 years is basically a series of failed efforts to power automobiles, with a recent fruitful detour into electronic gear. For a century we have been trying,...

A startup hopes to commercialize a novel design that features fluid electrodes. Last year, the battery startup A123 Systems spun out another company, called 24M, to develop a new kind of battery meant to make electric vehicles go farther and cost less. Now a research paper published in Advanced Energy Materials reveals the first details about how that battery would work. It also addresses the challenges in bringing the battery to market. A big problem with the lithium-ion batteries used in electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids is that only about 25 percent of the battery's volume is taken up by...

New energy-storage technology could surpass today's batteries in capacity and durability. A startup called Nanotune says its ultracapacitor technology could make electric cars cheaper and extend their range. The company, based in Mountain View, California, has developed a way to make electrodes that results in ultracapacitors with five to seven times as much storage capacity as conventional ones. Conventional ultracapacitors, which have the advantage of delivering fast bursts of power and can be recharged hundreds of thousands of times without losing much capacity, are too expensive and store too little energy to replace batteries. Nanotune, however, which has raised $3...

A new process could let your laptop and cell phone recharge a hundred times faster than they do now. A new way of making battery electrodes based on nanostructured metal foams has been used to make a lithium-ion battery that can be 90 percent charged in two minutes. If the method can be commercialized, it could lead to laptops that charge in a few minutes or cell phones that charge in 30 seconds. The methods used to make the ultrafast-charging electrodes are compatible with a range of battery chemistries; the researchers have also used them to make nickel-metal-hydride batteries, the...

Kia Motors Corp unveiled the "Naimo (KND-6)" electric concept car at Seoul Motor Show 2011, which opens for the public from April 1 to 10, 2011, in Seoul, South Korea. The electric vehicle (EV) has a lithium-polymer (Li-polymer) rechargeable battery with a capacity of 27kWh under its trunk. Its drive range is about 200km per charge. Its battery cells seem to be manufactured by LG Chem Ltd. The release date of the EV has not been determined yet. The Naimo has a permanent magnet synchronous motor in the front side of the vehicle. The maximum output and maximum torque of...

SIM-Drive Corp, a Japan-based start-up, announced that it has developed the "SIM-LEI" electric vehicle (EV). The four-seat EV is expected to be released in 2013. It is equipped with a lithium-ion (Li-ion) rechargeable battery with a capacity of 24.9kWh, and its drive range is 333km under the JC08 test mode. It measures 4,700 (L) x 1,600 (W) x 1,550mm (H) and weighs 1,650kg. The SIM-LEI uses in-wheel motors, motors that are for driving and stored in wheels. Unlike normal electric vehicles that use inner rotors and outer stators, the new EV uses outer rotors and inner stators. In 2004, Hiroshi...

A new approach to alkali batteries, in which the cathode is dissolved in water that flows through the system, could overcome the limitations of currently available batteries, scientists in the US say. Rechargeable lithium-ion batteries have revolutionised the mobility of small electronics, but their limited capacity means they don't stretch easily to bigger jobs such as running automobiles or storing power for national grid networks.Ordinarily, lithium ion batteries contain a solid anode, which gives up electrons, and a solid cathode, which receives them. The two are divided by an organic fluid electrolyte. This strategy depends on a cathode that can expand to...

When fresh water rivers flow into the sea the concentration difference leads to a change in entropy. US researchers have developed a battery that generates power from that entropy difference.Yi Cui's team at Stanford University, California, extract energy with 74 per cent efficiency using manganese dioxide nanorods and silver electrodes1. 'What we have really demonstrated that this idea can work,' says Cui.Cui's team estimate that if the technology was used on all world's rivers this renewable energy technology would hypothetically generate 2 TW, or approximately 13 per cent of current global consumption.Entropy based power generation has been done before but is most reliably done today...

Interesting news from General Motors today that's resulted in some puzzled expressions at Engadget HQ. We've learned that the Volt, which Chevrolet has been making quite a fuss about calling an "extended range electric vehicle," is actually just a traditional hybrid with some... potentially misleading marketing behind it. Since the concept stage the company has been saying how the onboard internal combustion engine was just to charge the batteries, that only the electric motors (there are two) are actually connected to the drivetrain. Indeed that's what we were told in person when we test drove the thing back in March....

The governor and others are suggesting that a $383 million government-subsidized battery plant for Livonia will jump start the state's struggling economy and create jobs. This is likely a highly exaggerated claim, according to two University of Michigan experts familiar with the battery industry. But while the U of M experts still see some merit in the project, the chief lobbyist for Michigan's small businesses says it exposes Michigan's job providers to more bad economic and tax policies. Peter Adriaens, the Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, says that the worthwhile investment...

You’ve got to be kidding?… Barack Obama hailed the opening of a Michigan battery plant today that produces car batteries that cost $33,000 each and go up to 100 miles before needing a charge. This is Barack Obama’s stimulus success story. He obviously didn’t learn much about the free market system from his socialist mentors during his community organizing days. This is supposed to be a Stimulus Bill success story. A $33,000 battery. (A123 Systems) The AP reported: President Barack Obama celebrated the opening of an advanced battery plant in Michigan on Monday as a critical boost for hybrid and...

Leigh Krietsch Boerner/Boston, US Mitochondria, often called the powerhouse of the cell, have been harnessed in a new battery-like device that could one day power small portable devices like mobile phones or laptops. Mitochondria convert fatty acids and pyruvate, formed from the digestion of sugars and fats, to adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the cell's energy supply. Along the way a tiny electrical current is generated, and Shelley Minteer and coworkers from Saint Louis University in Missouri, US, have now harnessed those flowing electrons to put them to work in a new biological battery device.  Speaking at the American Chemical Society national meeting in Boston, US, Minteer described how her team has...

Attacks mar Iowa State Fair Posted: Aug 25, 2010 10:01 AM CDT Updated: Aug 25, 2010 10:01 AM CDT Des Moines police are investigating a string of attacks at the Iowa State Fair, and say they may be racially motivated. Police say in the latest attack on the fair's final night, Sunday, 30 to 40 teens roamed the fairgrounds looking for trouble. Some teens had been yelling, "IT'S BEAT WHITEY NIGHT." State Troopers say they tried to disperse a crowd of teens Sunday night near the main gate at the fairgrounds, but once the teens left the grounds, they started...

Sources familiar with the police report tell us ... the alleged victim claims White allegedly punched her in one of her breast implants while they were driving on Pacific Coast Highway two weeks ago, with an infant in the car. We're told, she claims when they got home White allegedly slapped her, and pushed her into a toilet so hard it broke the tank. Sources connected with White's baby mama, Bridget Hardy, tell TMZ Hardy is in fact the alleged victim. We're told she did not report any injuries. The alleged victim filed a report with the LAPD Tuesday. The...

"As KMJ News was first to report Friday, the city of Fresno has agreed to pay a woman $150,000 to settle her claim that a former Fresno police officer touched her inappropriately during an investigation."

TEPCO installs long-life sodium-sulfur batteries for distribution network applications. The Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) has established large-scale power generation facilities, including base-load nuclear power plants and high-efficiency thermal peak-load generators, to supply the peak summer demand, which exceeds 60 GW. The utility provides electrical energy to Japan's capital city, Tokyo, an area of dense domestic and industrial customers. To meet the 60-GW summer demand, TEPCO has installed load-leveling technology in the form of pumped storage hydroelectric plants to improve system utilization, but there is now a shortage of suitable sites for these peak-load generation plants. One solution to the...

Interesting, and it's been reported at other forums, too; however, I have only linked the Apple Support forum thread. First post of that thread: I was having the same as everyone else... loosing 1% every 3 minutes...I took email complety off and still was loosing 1% every 8 minutes...called apple restore..didnt resolve...went to the Apple store and they swapped my phone out. Hello 3.1.3 And there are dozens and dozens of other reports like that, in just that thread.

SEATTLE -- Seattle police are investigating what they call an assault of an officer in South Seattle. However, a police officer is seen punching a 17-year-old girl in the face during the incident captured by a video camera on Monday. According to Seattle police, the incident began when an officer spotted a man jaywalking in the 3100 block of Martin Luther King, Jr. Way S. at approximately 3:10 p.m. The man was some 15 feet away from a pedestrian overpass, police said.

"A jury this morning found two Fresno Bulldog gang members not guilty of aggravated mayhem for inking a gang tattoo on a 7-year-old boy during Easter break 2009."

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- U.S. authorities have charged a man with attempting to board a flight from Puerto Rico with weapons including a stun gun, a switchblade knife and four box cutters. ~ snip ~ Pol was scheduled to take a JetBlue flight to Boston when he was arrested on Monday. In addition to the knives agents found pepper spray and a flight simulator program in his luggage.