Venture capital-backed lithium ion battery startup Amprius is finally moving into commercial production, with an announcement that it has OEM partners in place, and will start making its second-gen batteries later this year. Read more »
The modern centralized method of energy generation and distribution is inherently inefficient, and that state is embodied by a little known chart. It’s also this chart which could show just how efficient the energy grid could be with distributed energy storage and technology. Read more »
If battery makers could enhance just the basic electrolyte — the guts of the battery — it could provide a major breakthrough for batteries. That’s what a year-and-a-half-old startup called Boulder Ionics is trying to do. Read more »
Your LTE phone is just as adept at eating battery power as it is at eating bandwidth. Last week, I wrote about the many ways that LTE devices are far more power hungry than their 3G predecessors. Now let’s look at what’s being doing about it. Read more »
There are hundreds of startups, massive battery conglomerates and university labs that are trying to push the battery envelope and create as much power at the lowest cost for these little energy storage devices. Here’s some details from my GigaOM Pro report. Read more »
Batteries continue to be the bane of mobile devices, but research done at Northwestern University could change that, with longer-lasting batteries that charge in minutes, not hours. Imagine a battery that lasts 10 times longer than today’s power packs with a 15-minute recharge time! Read more »
Amidst the stock slump that lithium ion battery maker A123 System’s is facing, the company touts a new production contract with GM. Read more »
Only 72 percent of China’s wind-power sources are connected to its grid — meaning there’s a good deal of wind turbines that are spinning that aren’t providing usable clean power. Battery maker A123 Systems hopes its first deal in China can help with that problem. Read more »
The death of a battery: We’ve all seen it happen. In phones, laptops, cameras and now electric cars, the process is painful and — if you’re lucky — slow. But why does this happen? Read more »
Turns out cell phones and electric cars have more in common than you might think and technology developed for phones could help pave the way for more powerful electric cars. Read more »
A next-gen, lithium-ion battery startup — backed by Vinod Khosla’s Khosla Ventures — called Seeo has raised another $15 million from investors, according to a filing. Khosla Partner Pierre Lamond is listed on this latest filing, and Seeo previously raised at least $10.6 million. Read more »
A lot of companies and researchers are working away on the promises of the lithium air battery. Is it too good to be true? Read more »
There could be a delay in iPod production as a result of the closure of a polymer factory, owned by Kureha, near the Japanese earthquake’s epicenter. The polymer is a tiny but important part of lithium ion batteries and Kureha dominates that market. Here’s why: Read more »
Stanford University spinout Amprius has landed $25 million from investors, including Kleiner Perkins and Chinese firms IPV Capital and Qian Neng Fund, to bring its silicon nanowire lithium-ion battery anode technology to commercial production, most likely for consumer electronics batteries. Read more »
Executives from startup ETV Motors tell us, in an exclusive interview, how they’re shifting gears and divesting from the turbine business to focus on high-voltage, energy-dense battery cells for aviation, electric bikes and eventually plug-in cars. Read more »
The green car battery recycling bandwagon just got a bit more crowded. General Motors and Swiss grid giant ABB announced that the two companies will jointly research ways to reuse old batteries from GM’s Chevy Volt hybrid for storing power on the grid. Read more »
Lithium ion battery Amprius tells us that it has demonstrated in the lab the basic recipe for a much higher energy density battery that can tolerate the hundreds of charge cycles needed for long-lasting electronic devices. Up next, batteries for electric vehicles. Read more »
And the DOE loan guarantee train keeps on chugging. This morning the DOE says it has offered its 14th loan guarantee — a $17.1 million conditional commitment to AES to build a 20 MW energy storage system using A123System’s lithium ion batteries. Read more »
Boston-Power has raised $60 million in fifth-round financing — cash that the startup hopes will fuel a rapid expansion of its capacity to build energy storage devices for plug-in cars and the electric utilities. Read more »
Who can you expect to be very aggressive about going after the lithium reserves found in Afghanistan? China’s electric vehicle players. China is swiftly becoming an electric vehicle powerhouse, recently surpassing the U.S. as the world’s largest automobile industry. Read more »
Controversial greentech venture investor Vinod Khosla says the hype around — and DOE support for — batteries has distorted the green car market, leading to few investors focusing on innovation for the traditional internal combustion engine. Read more »
Chrysler and NASA plan to share data and research related to battery systems, energy storage, materials engineering, radar, robotics and other technologies over the next three years as part of a new alliance announced this morning. Read more »
In the weeks since restrictions lifted on insiders holding the bulk of A123′s stock, some executives have started to cash out. The transactions represent just a trickle of cash compared to the wealth created on paper in the first day of trading. Read more »
Amazon has followed through on its promise to bring the Kindle reader app to the BlackBerry. The app works much like the iPhone version, with support for online e-book purchasing. Whispersync technology keeps the BlackBerry content in sync across multiple Kindle devices. Read more »
Battery maker EnerDel has big plans for Mount Comfort, Indiana. That’s where the company, a subsidiary of Ener1 said today it plans to invest $237 million leasing and equipping a new manufacturing plant for lithium-ion battery cells and packs. Federal, state and local governments have stepped […] Read more »
