Battery Blues
February 9, 1998
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PC Week: Corporate users today can buy a notebook pc ranging from a high-end 266MHz Pentium model with a 14.1-inch screen to a thin-and-light laptop weighing less than 5 pounds. And price cutting such as last week's, in which vendors slashed prices on notebooks by as much as $1,000, has made portables much more affordable.
So what more could a notebook user want?
The answer is clear: better battery life.
Battery technology has made some strides over the past two years (see chart), but it has not kept pace with other notebook advances.
The notebook user's Holy Grail--full power during a coast-to-coast flight on one lightweight battery--remains elusive.
"Our people don't sit in the office. They travel a lot," said Andy Walsh, director of technology for Ernst & Young LLP's Assurance and Advisory Business Services, in Cleveland, where about 85 percent of PC purchases are notebooks.
"If we could remove one or two of those clunky batteries, people would be very enthusiastic," Walsh said. "If we could reduce weight and increase battery life, it would be an even greater thing."
Today's most prevalent battery technology, lithium-ion, can power a notebook for 2 to 3 hours. Lithium-ion, coupled with initiatives to lower component power consumption, such as ACPI (Advanced Configuration Power Management), are expected to push that limit to 5 hours.
"About 5 hours with a single [lithium-ion] cell pack [will happen] around the turn of the century," said Adalio Sanchez, vice president of IBM's mobile computing development, in Research Triangle Park, N.C.
To speed up that timetable and raise the bar even further, notebook vendors are counting on emerging battery technologies such as lithium-ion polymer.
Lithium-ion polymer, however, has yet to reach its potential or volume deployment, despite years of development.
"[Battery and computer makers] have been talking about [lithium-ion polymer] and zinc air forever and ever. Whether or not they're going to bring something to market that's viable anytime soon, I'm skeptical," said Jim Natlich, a technical analyst at Chevron Corp. headquartered in San Francisco.
What Natlich would like to see is a battery that lasts on cross-continental flights. "To do that now, you end up going with a second battery," he said. "I'd be prefer to have one battery in one slot."
"[Notebook vendors] are very interested in the technology, but there really isn't a lot of announced production out there," said Michael Corbet, an analyst at Kline & Co., a market research company, in Fairfield, N.J., that is conducting a study on advanced battery technologies.
Complex process
Why the delay? "Taking the components and bringing them together in a quality, bonded laminate has proved to be pretty tough," said David Cade, president of Lithium Technology Corp., in Plymouth Meeting, Pa.
Although it began work on lithium-ion polymer batteries back in 1983, Lithium Technology isn't expected to open a factory to produce the batteries in volume until next year. Two competitors, Valence Technology Inc. and UltraLife Batteries Inc., are only now outfitting factories for volume production of lithium-ion polymer.
"Production won't meet demand for at least a couple of years," Corbet said. By the year 2000, Kline & Co. projects production capacities will be as high as 300,000 battery packs per month.
UltraLife, of Newark, N.Y., is working to ramp up production of its solid-state lithium-ion polymer battery, said Joe Barrella, the company's chief technology officer.
"We're installing an automatic production line," Barrella said. "Over the next few months, we will qualify it." The system will be able to produce approximately 6,000 batteries per day, he said.
Lithium Technology and Valence are currently sampling lithium-ion polymer batteries to notebook vendors. Valence, which has a manufacturing facility in Mullusk, Northern Ireland, is expected to launch a lithium-ion polymer battery later this year.
Several other companies, including Energizer Power Systems, Battery Engineering Inc., Sony Corp., Panasonic Batteries, Sanyo Electric Co. and Toshiba America Electronic Components Inc., have lithium-ion polymer projects in the works.
And notebook vendors are finally going ahead with designs for the technology. Micron Electronics Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Digital Equipment Corp. are among the vendors working on next-generation systems that use lithium-ion polymer.
But so far, Mitsubishi Electric Corp. is the only company that claims to have shipped a notebook using a lithium-ion polymer battery, which it buys from UltraLife. However, its Pedion notebook, powered by lithium-ion polymer, is sold only in Japan.
One of the first to market in North America may be Acer America Corp., which is developing a TravelMate notebook that uses a lithium-ion polymer battery developed by Sony, company officials said. Acer plans to bring it to market this year, according to Arif Maskatia, the company's vice president of advanced technology, in San Jose, Calif.
Other alternatives using lithium technology are in the works: Lithium-ion prismatic is a thinner form factor unit currently used in cell phones but being developed by major battery manufacturers for notebooks; lithium metal polymer, being developed by Lithium Technology, uses lithium metal as the battery's anode, increasing the energy density of the battery.
While battery makers strive to increase the life of their units, other vendors are looking to extend notebook life by reducing power consumption of other components.
"We all like to blame the battery guys," Sanchez said. "The problem is not the battery. The problem is that we're growing system performance unconstrained."
Last year, Intel Corp. began the MPI (Mobile Power Initiative), an industrywide attempt to lower notebook power consumption. The goal is to design notebooks that consume less than 25 total watts of power by 1999.
The logic behind the MPI is to hold steady or decrease overall power requirements. That, combined with increased battery capacities, will lead to longer average battery life.
Another initiative, ACPI, was devised by Toshiba, Microsoft Corp. and Intel to allow Windows 98 to interface directly with a notebook's hardware for more efficient power management.
The goal is to increase battery life 10 percent to 20 percent once Windows 98 is released late this year.
While users wait for developing technologies to stabilize, existing batteries, coupled with more efficient components, will continue to push battery life.
"With the energy densities that are available in [lithium-ion] today and good power management, up to 5 hours of battery life is very doable," said Joe Carcone, vice president at Sanyo Energy USA Corp., in San Diego.
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