EVs Are Top Nissan Priority

[madokie]

http://blogs.edmunds.com:80/.eea6d04

EVs Are Top Nissan Priority Says Product Planning Chief; He Also Sees Diesel's Promise Fading

By John O'Dell, Senior Editor

CASCAIS, Portugal – Nissan Motor Co. which has promised to introduce an electric vehicle in North American in 2010, now sees enough market potential for battery-powered electric cars that it is planning a second model for as early as 2012.

The Japanese carmaker was late to the game with gas-electric hybrids and doesn't intend to get caught with a bare product portfolio as cheaper and more reliable batteries make EVs an economic and practical choice in coming years, product planning chief Tom Lane told Green Car Advisor in an interview at Nissan's global vehicle show-and-drive program in this coastal resort town just west of Lisbon.

Lane said that while Nissan began its green planning half a decade ago with a broad slate of possible technologies, economic and scientific changes have pushed battery-electric vehicles to the forefront as a near- and midterm market strategies to meet increased political and social demand for cleaner, more efficient vehicles.

Diesel Will Fade
While Nissan makes a number of diesel-powered cars and trucks for markets outside of the U.S., Lane said the company believes rising fuel prices, the high cost of diesel-emission cleaning technology and rapidly falling battery costs will make electric cars a better choice for many.

[tinrobot]

1. 2010 is shaping up to be a great year for electric cars

There's going to be a whole bunch of them coming out that year.

Finally.

[madokie]

2. It does seem that way

[kristopher]

3. It is even better than you think

This was originally posted by you I believe. Even better things are coming. Can you imagine having a range of 800 miles?

I wrote to a friend who is at the research edge of bringing the EV to market, and he said "On the nature article, yes, ... Si rather than Ca as the anode, a big deal. Theoretical is 10x, practical may be more like 7x, still a revolution. We need to see if the nano manufacturing can scale up to be cheap enough at high volumes (e.g. 8 million batteries per year, or maybe a couple hundred thousand per factory). If so, and if there's no other glitch, this is a game changer for EVs. eBox is 120 - 150 miles per battery, so imagine 840 to 1,000 miles per charge, in the same size and weight. That means we no longer need quick refuel, which eliminates the last advantage of liquid or gas as the light vehicle fuel. Don't expect to see preproduction samples earlier than 8 years from now, I'd guess."

Here is the url for that Nature article on 10X increase in LIon storage:
http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/v3/n1/full/nnano.2007.411.html

And here is the popular article on it.
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2008/january9/nanowire-010908.html

Stanford Report, December 18, 2007
Nanowire battery can hold 10 times the charge of existing lithium-ion battery

BY DAN STOBER


Photos taken by a scanning electron microscope of silicon nanowires before (left) and after (right) absorbing lithium. Both photos were taken at the same magnification. The work is described in “High-performance lithium battery anodes using silicon nanowires,” published online Dec. 16 in Nature Nanotechnology.

Stanford researchers have found a way to use silicon nanowires to reinvent the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that power laptops, iPods, video cameras, cell phones, and countless other devices.

The new technology, developed through research led by Yi Cui, assistant professor of materials science and engineering, produces 10 times the amount of electricity of existing lithium-ion, known as Li-ion, batteries. A laptop that now runs on battery for two hours could operate for 20 hours, a boon to ocean-hopping business travelers.

"It's not a small improvement," Cui said. "It's a revolutionary development."

The breakthrough is described in a paper, "High-performance lithium battery anodes using silicon nanowires," published online Dec. 16 in Nature Nanotechnology, written by Cui, his graduate chemistry student Candace Chan and five others.

The greatly expanded storage capacity could make Li-ion batteries attractive to electric car manufacturers. Cui suggested that they could also be used in homes or offices to store electricity generated by rooftop solar panels.

"Given the mature infrastructure behind silicon, this new technology can be pushed to real life quickly," Cui said.

The electrical storage capacity of a Li-ion battery is limited by how much lithium can be held in the battery's anode, which is typically made of carbon. Silicon has a much higher capacity than carbon, but also has a drawback.

Silicon placed in a battery swells as it absorbs positively charged lithium atoms during charging, then shrinks during use (i.e., when playing your iPod) as the lithium is drawn out of the silicon. This expand/shrink cycle typically causes the silicon (often in the form of particles or a thin film) to pulverize, degrading the performance of the battery.

Cui's battery gets around this problem with nanotechnology. The lithium is stored in a forest of tiny silicon nanowires, each with a diameter one-thousandth the thickness of a sheet of paper. The nanowires inflate four times their normal size as they soak up lithium. But, unlike other silicon shapes, they do not fracture.

Research on silicon in batteries began three decades ago. Chan explained: "The people kind of gave up on it because the capacity wasn't high enough and the cycle life wasn't good enough. And it was just because of the shape they were using. It was just too big, and they couldn't undergo the volume changes."

Then, along came silicon nanowires. "We just kind of put them together," Chan said.

For their experiments, Chan grew the nanowires on a stainless steel substrate, providing an excellent electrical connection. "It was a fantastic moment when Candace told me it was working," Cui said.

Cui said that a patent application has been filed. He is considering formation of a company or an agreement with a battery manufacturer. Manufacturing the nanowire batteries would require "one or two different steps, but the process can certainly be scaled up," he added. "It's a well understood process."

Also contributing to the paper in Nature Nanotechnology were Halin Peng and Robert A. Huggins of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford, Gao Liu of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Kevin McIlwrath and Xiao Feng Zhang of the electron microscope division of Hitachi High Technologies in Pleasanton, Calif.

[kristopher]

4. kick.