re: the rate at which the Klockner (aka David) line could produce cells for laptops:
At the nominal production rate of 3 cells/min for the standard 4"x4"x6-bicell product the number is much larger than that: assuming 300 days x 20 hrs/day you come up with 1.08M cells/yr. (This is the production rate quoted for this machine, at which they were able to cut and stack the bicells for the G* cells.)
For a laptop having 4 of these cells hooked up in series you would have 69 watt-hours, which even for a lower-power consumption cpu (e.g., intel speed-step) would be the amount needed to run for 6 or more hours on one charge. As a point of reference, the largest Dell Inspiron runs 6-8 hours on 90 watt-hour cells (i.e., both drive bays have batteries in them), but it also has a 15" active matrix screen. The transmeta chip may save on power, too. It all depends upon the application. (Aside: the Valence model 44, 5.7mm thick, provides 4575 mAh using the current chemistries, so 4 of these cells provide 69 watt-hours capacity.)
So, at this attainable capacity, even the ol' Klockner could produce enough cells for 22,000 laptops per month (1.08M cells/yr / 12 months/yr / 4 cells/laptop). Of course, as mooter pointed out, Valence needs a balanced facility that can handle the back-end processing, and the worst bottleneck has been identified as the packaging step.
But the talk is also all about second-source, so whether Matsushita is licensee or not, if indeed they can come online this year with a large-format cell, then they and Valence can get some of the laptop makers to get off the fence and make it happen. Maybe even Hitach-Maxell will have production capacity for their science-fair show-and-tell cells.
I've also long suspected that the customers want to see the phosphate chemistry in the cells, hence the foot-dragging. This would give them energy densities comparable to the best cobalt-based liquid-electrolyte lithium-ion cells (large cylindrical format), yet in a thin format. |
