Battery technology must progress substantially before fully powering cars

Articles — By forcechange on September 25, 2008 5:00 am

It seems that the state of battery technology is still a ways away from being able to allow for widespread adoption of purely electric vehicles.  This is one of the key points in the debate about the Pickens Plan. That is, whether we should convert all of our cars to natural gas, or go straight to electric?  The answer depends on whether the technology is or is not there yet. 

The next generation of car batteries are going to be litium-ion, which will replace nickel metal-hydride batteries.  However, in order to move to the next generation of vehicle batteries, big improvements must be made to extend the life, lower the cost, and increase the safety of these new batteries.  This is according to Tien Duong, a high ranking official at the U.S. Department of Energy, who answered questions at a lithium battery conference last week.

According to Duong, we are still some ways away from developing a lithium battery that can power a car for 40 miles on electricity alone by 2016, a goal of the Dept. of Energy.  On the one hand, this sounds surprising given the recent excitement over proposed electric cars like the Chevy Volt and Toyota Prius plug-in.  But on the other, as I sit here with an overheating notebook computer on my lap and a cell phone whose battery can’t last for more than one day, both of which use lithium-ion batteries, I can’t say that I’m shocked.  If that is in fact the case, we better not put all our eggs in the electric car basket quite yet… at least for the near future. 

[Note: in the Reuters article, Duong does say that there is a lot of discussion in Washington of funding a Department of Defense $1 billion battery project.  This marshalling of resources, to me, would seem to be one of the best shots at making rapid progress with this technology.]

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