Whoever thought about buying a hybrid car thought at first about fuel economy, for sure. Let’s be honest, what hurts us most on short term is on our minds on the top of the list. Global warming and global dimming are issues, but most second-hand ones. If you can’t afford to buy a hybrid or full electric car, even if it’s less polluting, you won’t buy it and drive your fossil fuel powered one.
EnerDel, a company who has been on the market since 2004, makes serious promises about more efficient lithium-Ion batteries (LIB) to be manufactured in the very near future. They’re planning to make 300,000 of them by 2010. They also say that their batteries keep their charge capacity for up to 300,000 cycles, or 10 years of life. That’s a long time for a battery’s charge capacity. EnerDel has a deal to supply car batteries to Think Global for their all-electric towncar, plus two more deals in the works. They are making another prediction that by 2011, lithium ion batteries will be utilized by 75 different car models, showing that car manufacturers are getting serious about ditching all-gas vehicles in the very near future.
Gassenheimer at EnerDel said long-sought advances in lithium ion battery technology may bring the pay back period of the investment to less than two years. The auto industry is following what the consumer electronics business did in the early 1990s, when it moved from nickel-based batteries to lithium.
“EnerDel will manufacture its batteries in Indiana utilizing a unique, highly automated manufacturing process. EnerDel expects to succeed as being the first company to cost-competitively mass-produce a Li-ion battery in the United States.”, they say.
