Developing Advanced Battery Packs for Electric Vehicles
It’s good to see the public and private sectors working together. Here’s a story announcing the U.S. Department of Energy’s five-year, $120-million award for a team of 14 companies, universities and national laboratories. The project will be led by Argonne National Laboratory, and will aim to develop advanced battery packs for electric vehicles.
Having next-gen batteries for electric transportation will be nice, but the key from an environmental perspective will be figuring out how to charge them without burning coal. Of course, if the project is successful and develops a solution whose cost is sufficiently low, the packs can be used to store off-peak wind and solar. That will be a happy day for humankind.
Good luck to the team; I hope the relationship will be cooperative, amiable and productive.
Advanced batteries will surely have multiple uses so even if electric vehicles do not become common, the investment in advanced batteries will probably still be worthwhile.
Presumably the batteries could be made in a variety of sizes and configurations. They could be useful for cordless electric lawnmowers, cell ‘phone towers so cell ‘phones would remain operable even with a power failure, hospital emergency power, computer power supplies, etc. etc. It might even be practical to smooth out the demand for power on the grid using advanced batteries.
It seems that all that DOE money that went to build factories was like putting the cart before the horse. NOW they realize they need an R&D horse? By the time this venture ends all those factories built will be obsolete.