The automotive lithium ion battery industry is now dominated by large Asian companies such as Japan’s Panasonic, China’s BYD and CATL, and Korea’s LG and Samsung. The efforts to kickstart a UK solid-state industry are part of an attempt to avoid a repeat of the experience with lithium ion batteries, which were invented at Oxford University in the 1970s but commercialised by Japan’s Sony. Prof Pam Thomas, the chief executive of the Faraday Institution, said the “unique consortium” was part of its efforts to “commercialise breakthrough science emerging from our research programmes to maximise UK economic value”. The other partners in the consortium will be the UK Battery Industrialisation Centre, which provides facilities for early-stage battery prototype production, the manufacturing equipment company Emerson & Renwick, and the University of Warwick. The British consortium has been put together by the Faraday Institution, a government-backed organisation focused on bringing the UK’s academic battery research to market. You don’t have any individual company developing any individual solution.” “If you bundle resources, they typically go a lot quicker. That could allow it to compete with other large companies racing to commercialise the technology, such as Toyota and Quantumscape, a US startup backed by Germany’s Volkswagen. He said the consortium was able to “cover the value chain” from materials through to final battery manufacture. There is space for many players and there is space for the many applications that we need to electrify.” “There’s such a strong need for batteries that I’m not afraid of there being one winner and one loser. “It’s an export opportunity for UK plc,” said Maurits van Tol, Johnson Matthey’s chief technology officer. Almost all electric vehicles in production use variations on lithium ion batteries. Solid-state batteries are considered by many analysts to be the most likely technology to offer significant improvements in range and charging times for electric vehicles.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |