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Strategies & Market Trends : Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mishedlo who wrote (78389)	4/26/2008 3:51:51 PM
From: Elroy Jetson	Respond to of 116555

Toyota uses Panasonic batteries and could use Cobasys batteries for plug-ins, as GM does, but has chosen not to. Cobasys continues to sell the existing battery line to anyone who wishes to purchase in volume. cobasys.com & greencarcongress.com I think the OC Weekly greatly over-estimates the value of Cobasys batteries developed by Stanford and Iris Ovshinsky in 1960. Cobabsys will lose $82 million this year and $76 million last year. The losses stem from the fact that the material cost of producing each battery is very close to the retail cost. Chevron no longer wishes to provide additional funds to Cobasys and has made the company available for sale since 2007. The joint-venture partner and original patent owner, ECD Ovonics (Energy Conversion Devices, Inc.), is suing Chevron for additional research funds, which will not be forthcoming. They'll need to find another source of endless capital - GM is not currently interested either as they have alternate suppliers. autobloggreen.com theoaklandpress.com .

To: mishedlo who wrote (78389)	4/26/2008 4:30:04 PM
From: Merlinson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116555

Mish, here is another possible battery solution, the EEstor super capacitor. It is tempting to pass it off as more pie in the sky, but Lockheed Martin took a close look and then gave them a bunch of money, so there's hope. They are designing an 'Electrical Energy Storage Unit' (EESU). From the wiki: The claims of the EESU are: * Nontoxic and non-hazardous * Non-explosive * For a 52 kWh unit, an initial production price of $3,200, falling to $2,100 with mass production is projected.[6] This is half the price per stored watt-hour as lead-acid batteries, and potentially cheap enough to use to store grid power at off-peak times for on-peak use, and to buffer the output from intermittent power sources such as wind farms. * No degradation from charge/discharge cycles * 4-6 minute charge time for a 336 pound (152 kg), 2005 cubic inch (33 L), 52 kilowatt hour (187 MJ), 31 farad, 3500 volt unit, assuming sufficient cooling of the cables. * A self-discharge rate of 0.1% per month . . . In April 2008, ZENN Motors announced a highway speed vehicle for 2009 which will achieve 80 mph (130 km/h) speeds, 250 mile (400 km) range and charge in 5 minutes[11]