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Toshiba's Fast-Charging Battery Could Triple the Range of Electric Vehicles (newatlas.com)
Big Hairy Ian quotes New Atlas: A key focus of electric vehicle (EV) makers is maximizing the range users can get from each charge, and for that reason new battery technologies are poised to play a huge part in driving their adoption. Toshiba has developed a new fast-charging battery it claims could allow EVs to travel three times as far as they do now, and then be fully recharged again in a matter of minutes.
Toshiba's SCiB (Super Charge ion Battery) has been around in various forms since 2007, with its chief claim to fame an ability to charge to 90 percent of capacity in just five minutes. It also boasts a life-span of 10 years and high levels of safety, and has found its way into a number of notable EVs, including Mitsubishi's i MiEV and Honda's Fit EV. The current SCiB uses lithium titanium oxide as its anode, but Toshiba says it has now come up with a better way of doing things. The next-generation SCiB uses a new material for the anode called titanium niobium oxide, which Toshiba was able to arrange into a crystal structure that can store lithium ions more efficiently. So much so, that the energy density has been doubled.
Toshiba calls the battery "a game changing advance that will make a significant difference to the range and performance of EV," and hopes to put it "into practical application" in 2019.
Toshiba's SCiB (Super Charge ion Battery) has been around in various forms since 2007, with its chief claim to fame an ability to charge to 90 percent of capacity in just five minutes. It also boasts a life-span of 10 years and high levels of safety, and has found its way into a number of notable EVs, including Mitsubishi's i MiEV and Honda's Fit EV. The current SCiB uses lithium titanium oxide as its anode, but Toshiba says it has now come up with a better way of doing things. The next-generation SCiB uses a new material for the anode called titanium niobium oxide, which Toshiba was able to arrange into a crystal structure that can store lithium ions more efficiently. So much so, that the energy density has been doubled.
Toshiba calls the battery "a game changing advance that will make a significant difference to the range and performance of EV," and hopes to put it "into practical application" in 2019.
This is almost head-smackingly bad.
LTO (like Toshiba's SCiB) has only recharge speed and durability going for it. Everything else about it is terrible, including energy density (vastly inferior to other li-ion chemistries - their best ones are something like 100Wh/kg), and the most important aspect, price. LTO is extremely expensive ($1000/kWh at present; most EVs use batteries in the ballpark of ~$150/kWh).
So now Toshiba has announced that their next generation is going to include.... niobium? A metal that costs about $200 per kilogram?
I guess that they better get this one out on the market before the come out with their next battery based on cesium, holmium and platinum ;)
I'll BUILD someone to replace you. Some kind of gamma-powered monster, with a heart as black as coal!
Battery research has been ongoing at a phenomenal rate of advancement for 16+ years at this point. You appear to have no concept of how rapidly batteries are advancing. When the lead-acid battery was invented more than 100 years ago it became the one and only battery technology up until the 90's. The advancements during that time period were slow and nearly insignificant in comparison to the current breakthroughs with a major advancement about every 20-50 years.
Lithium Ion batteries in turn have advanced so quickly that capacity is growing 20% a year. The same size and weight battery in 2008 now holds more than triple the charge and costs 90% less. Every year there are new advancements that roll into the supply chain a few years later sustaining this continuing innovation. In 2008 Lithium Ion batteries were near on $1000kwh, now prices are $125 and expected to reach $50 by 2020. This is revolutionizing the world, already numerous countries, including China the largest automotive market in the world, have announced that by 2030 they won't allow petrol based vehicles to be sold.
If you told someone in 1990 that the Gas and Diesel automobile would be dead in 40 years and it would be killed by a battery electric car they would have laughed their ass off.