Traditionally batteries for use in electric or hybrid cars are big, expensive and need to be recharged frequently. The Ultrabattery looks like a big step forward in dealing with these problems.
Australia's CSIRO has a page explaining about the project. A lead acid battery is linked to a supercapacitor and means that recharging the battery does not, as previously happened to that variety of battery, produce a residue which shortens the life of the battery. The new design means that its "cycle life" is four times longer than conventional lead acid batteries, there is 50% more power, and the cost is a lot less than the nickel-metal batteries which are normally used for cars. Tests are still on-going.
CSIRO has signed a commercialisation and distribution agreement for the Ultrabattery with Japan's Furukawa Battery Company, says the CSIRO site. In fact Furukawa seems to be more involved than that, as four of the five inventors are Japanese, and Furukawa are a joint applicant for the patent application, Optimised Energy Storage Device, which was published in September 2008.
Also relevant, I think, is their Improved energy storage device, with its main illustration shown here.
At present it is only an application for protection, but as the search report at the end of the 40 page patent specification does not list any X or Y citations, suggesting that it had been done before, the future looks good for the invention as there is so much interest now in electric cars. The problem is ensuring cheap, compact storage in the batteries and not having to recharge all the time.
It will be interesting to see how much one of the cars will sell for once these batteries go in to production. Might still follow the way of the Hybrids and still be out of reach for the average consumer.
Posted by: Sam | 20 November 2008 at 03:50
This is really a nice topic about high energy and powerful batteries which are used for running vehicle .
http://crash456.blog.co.uk/2009/09/24/hybrid-vans-an-alternative-to-fuel-emissions-7030016/
Posted by: Cherry Emery | 24 September 2009 at 12:59
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Posted by: Nicole | 28 November 2009 at 05:11