The lithium couple is the one that
everyone feels is about the best we can hope for in battery technology. 3M has a
lithium polymer battery, and SAFT is concentrating on the lithium-ion battery.
If you wanted to buy a set of EV batteries now, I was quoted $20,000 per module for
lithium-ion batteries if I wanted to try them out. 3M’s lithium polymer battery
is an all plastic battery with no liquid electrolyte. They are claiming that a
450-pound battery pack will result in an electric car with a range of about 300
miles. And they have just handed it over to the auto-makers for testing.
But at this point, it’s anybody’s guess as to whether we’ll
soon see the large-scale shift to battery-electric cars that everyone was talking about a
few years ago. Recent work appears to be taking us in the direction of
hybrid-electric vehicles. I'm not suggesting that battery-electric cars have lost out.
My sense of it is that BEVs will blossom within the context of a different paradigm of
personal mobility.
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