February 4th, 2010

New technology extends lithium-ion battery life

A Japanese company called Eamex claims it has found a way [JP] to increase the life of high-capacity lithium-ion batteries (that can be used in electric vehicles). Eamex says the new batteries can be charged and discharged over 10,000 times. Apparently, they can last about 20 years, too. → Read More

August 17th, 2009

New battery material could boost efficiency of electric cars by a factor of ten

Electric cars have one major problem: Especially in the case of long drives, owners have to make too many stops to charge the battery. Now a group of researchers from Toyota and Tohuku University (in Northern Japan) announced progress on their work to do away with this inconvenience.

They were able to make single crystals of lithium cobalt oxide, a chemical compound used in the production of… → Read More