Smaller, Lighter, Cheaper Hybrid Battery Unveiled
By John O'Dell May 15, 2008
New battery pack is stacked atop standard Prius battery to show size difference.
By John O'Dell, Senior Editor
Building a better battery is no easy chore -- witness the scramble going on right now to prefect batteries for plug-in hybrids and extended range electric vehicles such as the upcoming Chevrolet Volt.
There are a host of issues to tackle including weight, safety, power and energy density, and, of course cost.
So there ought to be a maket for a hybrid vehicle battery that's lighter, cheaper and safer than the kind presently in use.
Dan Squiller says his Southern California company has one.
A World's-First
It's a nickel zinc battery, NiZn for short and not to be confused with NiMH, for nickel-metal hydride, the standard today for hybrid-electric vehicles while the auto and battery industries are hard at work perfecting lithium-ion batteries to replace them.
But lithium-ion batteries, while lighter and more powerful, is a lot more expensive than nickel-metal hydride, and that has given Squiller's company a wedge it hopes will make it a big player in the battery biz.
PowerGenix, an eight-year-old San Diego company that started selling its first batteries – for cordless power tools – just last month, says it has developed the world's first rechargeable nickel-zinc batteries suitable for hybrid-electric vehicle application. The company, which unveiled its prototype battery pack today at the Advanced Automotive Battery and Ultracapacitor Conference in Tampa, Fla., said its nickel zinc chemistry is non-toxic, non-combustable and enables it to build batteries that are smaller, lighter, more energy-dense and cheaper than the prevailing nickel metal-hydride batteries.
To demonstrate some of those advantages, PowerGenix built a NiZn battery pack that, it said, will provide a 2008 Prius hybrid with the same power as the car's conventional nickel metal-hydride pack but is 33 percent smaller and 40 per cent lighter.
In an interview with Green Car Advisor, PowerGenix CEO Squiller said his company's batteries also would cost 20 percent less than those now used by Toyota for the Prius. The batteries would be about half the cost of comparable lithium ion cells, he said.
The PowerGenix batteries aren't suitable for use in plug-in hybrids or all-electric vehicles, Squiller said, but that's not their purpose.
The company is betting that their low cost and other advantages will make them the battery of choice for future generations of conventional battery-electric vehicles.
Benefits
A NiZn battery pack's reduced size and weight will give designers and engineers more flexibility and will enable automakers to put hybrid-electric powertrains into smaller vehicles than can use the systems now, Squiller said.
The batteries also could help improve fuel economy in larger hybrids that now use nickel metal-hydride by reducing the vehicles' overall heft, he said.
Each the 120 cells in a Prius-sized PowerGenix pack are the same size as a conventional D-cell battery – and the same size as the cells used in nickel metal-hydride packs, he said. But the PowerGenix battery cells pack 1.6 volts versus 1.2 volts in an NiMH cell.
"We have more energy density, for increased length of service," Squiller said. "The benefit in a hybrid is better fuel economy" because the batteries permit more use of the electric motor, either in low-speed all-electric drive or to augment the gas engine when acceleration or hill-climbing power is needed.
Rapid Growth Seen
"There is going to be explosive growth in the hybrid battery market," Squiller said, noting that dozens of new models of hybrids are expected to hit the streets in the next few years and that the battery market, now about $500 million a year, could hit $2.5 billion by 2012.
Other advantages of his company's nickel zinc batteries, Squiller said, are that they are made of a high percentage of recycled material, don't require new factories because they can be made on existing nickel metal-hydride and nickel cadmium battery production lines, and don't have the heat build up "thermal indident,"or overheating, problems of either lithium ion or nickel metal-hydride batteries so don't need the their complex and costly heat management electronics.
Nickel zinc battery technology's been around a long time, Squiller acknowledges. But the batteries haven't been used in situations where recharging is necessary because the process dissolves the zinc electrode.
PowerGenix' advance, he said, has been to figure out a way to make the zinc non-soluable so it doesn't degrade a the batteries are recharged.
Not For EVs
While lithium ion batteries and "fuel cells, ultimately" are the only devices capable of delivering the power and range that consumers want ion an all-electric vehicle, Squiller said, "the cost premium for lithium doesn't make it worth it for hybrids. That's where we come in."
He said PowerGenix is talking with several major battery makers about safety, durability and longevity testing and intends to license its technology to a major battery maker once the results are in hand to validate the company's claims.
"We think we can be in production [through a licensee] in two years," he said.
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Update, 5/28/07: For clarity, eliminated "for increased length of service," changed "heat build up" to "thermal incident, or overheating," and modified final quote to add "[through a licensee]."
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