CATL’s new 500 Wh/kg battery could enable electrification of passenger aircraft


At this week’s Auto Shanghai, CATL announced a new battery technology that it says offers sufficient energy density to enable the electrification of passenger aircraft. CATL says its new condensed battery will offer specific energy (energy stored per unit of weight) of up to 500 Wh/kg, as well as “a high level of safety,” and… Read more »

ANSI invites public comment on its Roadmap of Standards and Codes for EVs


As the EV market expands at a rapid pace, many in the industry are lamenting the relative lack of EV engineering standards. Now the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) has taken a major step forward, releasing a draft Roadmap of Standards and Codes for Electric Vehicles at Scale. The roadmap identifies key safety, performance, and… Read more »

EV battery transport: 5 challenges and how to overcome them


Sponsored by Labelmaster. The EV market is booming, with the number of EVs on the road expected to hit 125 million by 2030. But the rapidly growing EV market has brought with it complex supply chain challenges associated with transporting the large format lithium-ion batteries that power them. And these challenges only increase depending on… Read more »

Alkegen launches commercial production of new silicon battery anode material


Specialty materials developer Alkegen has begun commercial production of SiFAB, its new silicon fiber anode material, at its manufacturing facility in New Carlisle, Indiana. Large-scale production of the product, says Alkegen CEO John Dandolph, is intended “to meet growing demand from customers across a wide range of industries, including EVs, renewable energy storage and consumer… Read more »

Chinese automakers are forging ahead with sodium-ion batteries

CATL Sodium ion
Sodium-ion batteries, which could offer significant cost and raw material procurement advantages over the lithium-ion kind, have been much discussed in the press of late. Chinese battery behemoth CATL unveiled its first-generation sodium-ion battery in July 2021. At the time, analysts predicted that Na-ion cells, which are expected to offer only modest energy density, would… Read more »

EV engineering webinar recordings are now available to view on-demand


Charged hosted a virtual conference on EV engineering last week, and all of the sessions were recorded and are now available to watch on-demand for free! Register for a session here to watch the presentation, download the slides and submit questions to the speakers. Just like the content Charged brings you every day, the conference… Read more »

Albemarle to build a lithium processing facility in South Carolina


Specialty chemicals company Albemarle has announced plans to build a lithium hydroxide processing facility in Chester County, South Carolina. Plans for the facility include an initial investment of at least $1.3 billion. The so-called Mega-Flex plant will be able to process diverse lithium feedstocks, including lithium from recycled batteries. Albemarle expects the facility to produce… Read more »

Lucid’s cell specialist, battery immersion cooling and more (Today’s webinar schedule)


Today, Charged is hosting a virtual conference on EV engineering that’s free to attend. The conference includes live webinar sessions with interactive Q&As and on-demand webinars. View the daily session schedule online here. All live sessions will be recorded and available to view after the broadcasts. You can access the recorded videos on each session’s… Read more »

Detecting latent defects in electric motors with partial discharge


Sponsored by Marposs. Motor testing is designed to check the integrity of an electric motor through the use of equipment that identifies potential issues within the motor. The main objective of motor testing is to reveal latent problems and to prevent unnecessary failure by evaluating static parameters like insulation, wire damage and electrical current leakage, as well… Read more »

TDK Ventures invests in Novalith clean lithium-extraction technology


Embargo til April 17 TDK Ventures has invested in lithium-extraction startup Novalith, which has developed a novel system for extracting battery-grade lithium from resource deposits. Novalith points out multiple drawbacks of current lithium production methods. Traditional ore mining involves the arduous process of finding lithium-containing ore, followed by major investments in infrastructure and time to… Read more »