Toshiba Entering Battery Fray - December 15th, 2007
AutoBlogGreen carried a report on December 11 detailing Toshiba’s new offering of batteries for electric vehicles set to debut in March 2008. (If we want to keep up the chain of info, they got it via Engadget that got it from Toshiba.)
The company’s press release detailing the Super Charge Ion Battery (SCiB) says it can reach a 90 percent charge in just 5 minutes and only drop 10 percent efficiency after 3,000 recharges. The press release points to initial usage in electric bikes and motorcycles as well as fork lifts and construction machinery, with future plans for use in hybrids and electric cars. The plan seems to be to prove the tech in industrial applications and then clean it up for prime time. Toshiba has to have faith in the SCiB because they say they’re going after a 10 percent global market share by 2016.
Let’s face it, all the cute little electric car designs in the world are going to fail if the battery issue isn’t resolved. The big problems right now are capacity and overheating. No one is going to want an electric car that lacks decent range, takes forever to recharge, and could burst into flames (think Sony laptop problems of recent vintage) without warning. There are lots of small companies out there working on better battery tech, but in the long run it’s probably going to take the clout (read “capital”) of a major player like Toshiba to make it happen.
File this one under the heading of “no glamour but real practicality” and let’s keep our fingers crossed that Toshiba really is on to something here.
Posted on December 15th, 2007 by Shorty
Filed under: technology, alternative fuels |
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