Detroit and America can’t go green without a focus on battery technology
With all the talk of bailing out the Detroit automakers and the need for them to make more efficient vehicles, there has been little attention paid to the actual technology that efficient cars are built upon– batteries.
EV World sums up the problem: “Little if any attention was paid to the fact that America has next to no advanced automotive lithium ion battery production capacity. With the exception of a currently shrinking handful of US-based firms, virtually all advanced nickel metal hydride (NiMH) and lithium ion (Li-ion) production is done overseas, mainly in China, Japan and Korea.”
And Tom Friedman makes a high level analysis: “I want every bailed-out car company to move to hybrid electric drive trains, because nothing would both improve mileage and emissions more – and also stimulate a whole new 21st-century, job-creating industry: batteries.
“Big batteries that can store electricity for transportation and wind and solar generation are the indispensable enablers of the Energy Internet of the future. Any Detroit bailout has to serve that goal….
“It’s the key to clean-tech – and ultimately our national competitiveness. We can’t allow ourselves to be battery importers in the 21st century the way we were oil importers in the 20th.”
- Similar Posts:
- Intel to manufacture advanced batteries for electric vehicles?
- Ford Rains on Its Own Parade: ‘Fusion Hybrid May Face Battery Shortages’
- Battery technology must progress substantially before fully powering cars
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