In 2009, the U.S. made less than 2 percent of the world’s lithium-ion batteries. By 2015, the Department of Energy projects that, thanks mostly to the government’s recent largess, the United States will have the capacity to produce 40 percent of them. Whichever country figures out how to lead in the production of lithium-ion batteries will be well positioned to capture “a large piece of the world’s future economic prosperity,” says Arun Majumdar, the head of the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). The batteries, he stressed, are essential to the future of the global-transportation business and to a variety of clean-energy industries.
We may marvel at the hardware and software of mobile phones and laptops, but batteries don’t get the credit they deserve. Without a lithium-ion battery, your iPad would be a kludge. The new Chevrolet Volt and Nissan Leaf rely on big racks of lithium-ion battery cells to hold their electric charges, and a number of new models — including those from Ford and Toyota, which use similar battery technology — are on their way to showrooms within the next 18 months.
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I like it that A123 sponsors an electric drag racing bike called Killacycle. It does zero to sixty in less than one second! In the quarter mile, it accelerates to 169 miles per hour in 7.86 seconds using less than 10 cents of electricity. ‘Still think electric vehicles are pokey?
My teacher at Temple University said that we can’t compete and the truth is that you can’t compete with someone making .50 cents a day overseas which is why America will have to sell information which sits well in the academic environment because Universities will then be sellers of information.
I like it that A123 sponsors an electric drag racing bike called Killacycle. It does zero to sixty in less than one second! In the quarter mile, it accelerates to 169 miles per hour in 7.86 seconds using less than 10 cents of electricity. ‘Still think electric vehicles are pokey?
Hooray for A123!
My teacher at Temple University said that we can’t compete and the truth is that you can’t compete with someone making .50 cents a day overseas which is why America will have to sell information which sits well in the academic environment because Universities will then be sellers of information.