By MATTHEW L. WALD
ALLENTOWN, Pa. — In a gleaming white factory here, Bob
Peters was gently feeding sheets of chemical-coated foil one
afternoon recently into a whirring machine that cut them
into precise rectangles. It was an early step in building a new
kind of battery, one smaller than a cereal box but with almost
as much energy as the kind in a conventional automobile.
The goal of Mr. Peters, 51, and his co-workers at
International Battery, a high-tech start-up, is industrial
revolution. Racing against other companies around the
globe, they are on the front lines of an effort to build smaller,
lighter, more powerful batteries that could help transform
the American energy economy by replacing gasoline in cars
and making windmills and solar cells easier to integrate into
the power grid.
This summer the Obama administration plans to announce
how it will distribute some $2 billion in stimulus grants to
companies that make such advanced batteries for hybrid or
all-electric vehicles and related components. International
Battery is vying for a modest chunk of it.
The hope is that the grants will spur far higher levels of
experimentation and production, pushing down the costs
that have prevented these batteries from entering the mass
market.
The batteries would not only replace the fuel tanks in
millions of cars and trucks, but would also make windmills
and solar cells more practical, by absorbing excess energy
when their production jumps and giving it back when the
wind suddenly dies or the sun goes behind a cloud.
But first, companies like International Battery will have to
tweak the chemistry of their devices and improve the
manufacturing process, bolstering the batteries’ capabilities.
And prices will have to come down — a problem that is far
more daunting when it comes to batteries for vehicles and
the grid, because the packs are hundreds or thousands of
times the size of those for handheld electronics.
Nearly all battery research now focuses on lithium ion
batteries, which made their consumer debut in 1991 and
have since replaced nickel-cadmium and nickel-metalhydride
technologies in many portable electronics.
Lithium is the third-lightest element on the periodic table,
which allows for far greater energy density. A lithium ion
battery that will move a car one mile weighs less than half as
much as a nickel metal hydride and one-sixth as much as
lead acid.
Advanced battery manufacturing is mostly based in Japan,
China, Taiwan and South Korea, where laptop computers
and similar devices are built.
International Battery bought machines from China that
manufacture the components and has been tweaking them to
make them run faster, use fewer materials and produce a
better product. Each button on the control panels is labeled
in Chinese characters, with English penciled in by hand
underneath. Near Mr. Peters’s machine, a cardboard box
awaiting unpacking bears hand lettering that says, “Glass
Please Carefully.”
Other companies are also trying out new chemistries and
materials, at the positive and negative terminals of the
battery. As technicians try to improve battery assembly, the
first requirement is a strikingly clean work environment. Mr.
Peters, in goggles and spotless rubber gloves, declined to
shake hands recently, just as a surgeon might on the way into
the operator room.
The gloves protect him from the chemicals in the battery,
which include nickel, cobalt and manganese, and shield the
battery’s delicate tissues from the natural oils on his fingers.
“We don’t want any debris,” said Mr. Peters, who formerly
worked at a nearby factory that made bulletproof glass.
(International Battery’s pristine new showplace was
previously an appliance repair shop.)
The engineers face a difficult challenge. The batteries have to
store a lot of energy in a small, light package, scoring high in
a quality known as energy density. They also have to absorb
energy and give it back quickly, a factor called power density.
Think of a battery as a bottle for energy, and the power
density as the size of the bottle’s neck. Good power density
means a shape like a peanut butter jar, easy to fill or empty;
low power density is more like a wine jug with a narrow
neck.
The batteries have to charge quickly and withstand
thousands of cycles of charge and discharge. They have to
dissipate heat without catching fire, a product problem that a
giant like Apple Computer could survive but a start-up
electric car company probably could not. The batteries must
function in Maine winters and Texas summers.
Engineers have met almost all of these goals, but not
simultaneously in one product. And they are still way off on
price: the components remain far too costly. But they are
trying, devoting more and more resources to meeting that
goal.
A few yards away from Mr. Peters, workers were getting
ready to tear out the cafeteria so new cubicles could be built
for more engineers as International Battery’s production
expands.
“The battery is an enabler” of electric vehicles and other
technologies, said Ted J. Miller, a technical specialist at the
Ford Motor Company, referring to the models being
produced in Allentown and others relying on different
chemistry.
Mr. Miller represents Ford at the Advanced Battery
Consortium, an organization formed with federal
encouragement in 1991 to coordinate research on
technology. Ford, Chrysler and General Motors have
contributed, often with research scientists and facilities, and
the Energy Department has written checks.
Automakers need improvements in batteries “everywhere we
can get it,” Mr. Miller said.
In 1991 the Advanced Battery Consortium was founded and
set a near-term target for developing a battery that would
cost $150 per kilowatt-hour of storage. (A kilowatt-hour sells
for about a dime and will move a car three or four miles.)
Eighteen years later, prices are in the range of $750 to
$1,000. By comparison, a lead-acid battery in a conventional
car costs less than $100 for that much capacity, although it is
much too heavy to build an electric car around and not
durable enough.
Now the Energy Department has a new goal: $500 by 2012.
“We think we can make that,” said Patrick Davis, the
program manager at the Energy Department’s vehicle
technologies program.
One reason for the optimism is the infusion of money that
Washington is preparing to get the job done. The $2 billion
in new grants planned this summer includes $1.2 billion for
companies manufacturing battery cells and complete battery
packs, $350 million for electric drive component
manufacturing and $25 million for battery recycling. The cell
and battery- pack companies could get up to $150 million
each. Companies have already applied for more than $6
billion in grants.
The Obama administration is also hoping to drum up market
demand. In March, President Obama, visiting a testing
center for electric vehicles run by Southern California Edison
in Pomona, announced tax credits of up to $7,500 for
consumers who buy plug-in hybrid vehicles. Such models get
some of their energy from the power grid and some from
gasoline.
“This investment will not only reduce our dependence on
foreign oil, it will put Americans back to work,” Mr. Obama
said. “It positions American manufacturers on the cutting
edge of innovation and solving our energy challenges.”
Some industry experts say that simply getting electric cars to
market will touch off a cycle of new research, investment and
product improvement.
“If there is a demand for all-electric vehicles, as opposed to
small hybrids, you’re going to have a monumental scale-up
of the battery industry,” said Kevin Czinger, chief executive
of Coda Automotive, which plans to offer a $45,000 fourdoor
all-electric sedan in California next year.
But when it comes to a genuine mass market for an
affordable plug-in hybrid or all-battery car, “we don’t quite
know how to get there,” said Mr. Miller, of Ford.
Consumer Reports magazine detailed the price problem in
its February issue, reviewing an after-market conversion of a
Prius to a plug-in. For $10,875 the magazine had a fivekilowatt-
hour battery installed by a Toyota dealership in
Massachusetts. It got a 67 miles a gallon, a 35 percent
improvement over the stock version.
“Our Prius’s conversion to plug-in power cost more than you
could ever expect to recoup in gas savings,” the magazine
said. Still, “as a sign of things to come, we found it
encouraging.”
Carl A. Picconatto, a battery expert at Mitre, a technology
consulting firm, and other scientists suggest that materials
reduced to the nano scale are a promising avenue. Nanomaterials
have huge surface areas in small, light packages;
batteries work through chemical reactions that unfold on
surface structures.
In batteries, charged particles travel through electrolytes.
Crawling through an electrolyte consumes energy that does
not get delivered to the consumer. But pushing through a
nano-material could be like “pushing your hand through
sand, versus pushing your hand through a big pile of rocks,”
Dr. Picconatto said.
Still, in some applications, nano-materials gum up the
works, or break down after a few dozen charges and
discharges, experts say. Solving that problem could allow a
cheaper, lighter battery pack.
The plug-in hybrid Chevy Volt, due out in November 2010,
will carry 16 kilowatt-hours and go up to 40 miles on a full
charge; if estimates from Mr. Miller hold when it goes into
mass production, the battery pack alone would run from
$9,600 to $16,000. And that does not count related parts
like the system that maintains the temperature of the cells
within an acceptable range and manages the charging and
discharging.
G.M. would not disclose the price of the battery pack but
expressed optimism that it would fall.
“We believe electrification is the future if the industry,” said
Bob Kruse, the company’s executive director for global
vehicle engineering, hybrids, electric vehicles and batteries.
“The mastery of battery technology is key,” he said. “We still
have a lot of work to do.”
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