A global race for the plug-in hybrid battery hits the back stretch

The ingredients for a multibillion-dollar global technology race sit on a table here in this Milwaukee suburb. They make the process seem pretty simple: Two strips of specially coated foil and a thin, plastic-like material called a separator are carefully wrapped together in a layered spiral that technicians here call the "jelly roll."

Then the jelly roll is put in a can. A fluid called an electrolyte, which transfers electricity, is added. The cans are connected in a series, and voila, you have the device that most of the world's automobile manufacturers are desperate to acquire: the lithium-ion battery. Because it is 30 percent smaller and 50 percent lighter than the batteries used in current hybrids, it appears to be the battery of choice for the next generation of hybrid-electric vehicles, including cars with the potential to achieve over 100 miles per gallon.

!ADVERTISEMENT!

An automotive version of this type of battery, which would store and release the energy in the so-called "plug-in" version of the hybrid, represents a major technological breakthrough that could curb one of the world's most severe climate-related problems, carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles. Beyond that, plug-ins could propel the United States closer to its bipartisan dream of energy independence because drivers can refuel these batteries by plugging into the electric grid, which runs primarily on U.S.-produced coal, natural gas and nuclear power.

The lithium-ion auto battery -- capable of storing about 100 times the energy in conventional car batteries -- may sound simple and attractive, but its wayward, secrecy-shrouded course of development has been anything but. The race to bring it into commercial production is a tough and expensive marathon. With several months left to go, the most likely winners appear to be in Japan and other nations in the Far East, but that's not certain yet.

'A lot of twists and turns'

"I think there will be a lot of twists and turns in this," explained Alex Molinaroli, president of the automotive battery division of Johnson Controls, a company that could win big or lose a lot in this race. It is currently the world's largest battery manufacturer of lead acid batteries, the kind that live under the hoods of most modern cars. The company's facility here is the only plant outside of Asia that does research and development for the manufacture of the plug-in hybrid batteries.

While lithium-ion batteries were invented in the United States in the 1970s as part of Cold War and space-related research, they were first developed on a commercial scale for cell phones and laptop computers by Japanese companies in the 1990s. Since then, Japanese companies, along with some Korean and Chinese firms, have built up a lead in the race to master the technology for automobiles.

Johnson Controls estimates that, currently, more than 90 percent of the materials and the technology for the batteries come from overseas. That poses a national problem, explained Ahmad Pesaran, a battery expert at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colo.

"If we are going to make millions of these, we need to make them here," he asserted. "It doesn't make a lot of sense to exchange our dependency on oil for a dependency on a technology that is made overseas." To develop more U.S. expertise in the batteries, the Department of Energy is devoting $50 million to auto battery research, and according to the agency, 95 percent is spent on perfecting lithium-ion technology. The money is going to five national laboratories and a dozen universities. During the last presidential race, both the president-elect, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), and his opponent, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), pledged more money to expand and accelerate the effort.

But, as some laptop computer manufacturers have discovered, producing lithium-ion batteries requires a highly skilled labor force and an efficient supply chain. Tiny flaws in manufacturing processes have caused batteries to overheat, or even to explode. Moreover, the batteries being designed for cars will have to tolerate conditions that laptop batteries don't see, such as prolonged exposure to sub-zero temperatures and an expected lifetime of 10 to 15 years.

Haresh Kamath, a battery expert at the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit research group sponsored by the nation's utilities, noted that the current battery in hybrid cars, the nickel metal hydride battery, has proven it can take a lot of abuse. "Lithium-ion is a little more sensitive; it is more like a diva, so to speak. So we have to put more [safety] controls on them." Commercial pressures on some battery companies, he said, may have pushed their engineers "to the very edge of what they could do with engineering."

Banking on the 'diva' of batteries

"Batteries don't die, they get murdered," said Pesaran of NREL, which is why his laboratory is building new machines to measure the temperatures of prototype batteries and to see how fully they can discharge their energy and then recharge again, which will be a requirement for lithium-ion.

Michael Fetcenko, a vice president of ECD Ovonics, a Rochester Hills, Mich., company that developed and licensed the nickel metal hydride batteries used in many hybrids today, said his company is by no means out of the running. "We're the champ. It's the other guys who are the contenders," said Fetcenko, who says his company is hard at work making its batteries smaller, cheaper and more powerful to fit the needs of the plug-in hybrids.

But other battery companies and most car companies are pushing toward lithium-ion. "Our business plan is to invest $1 billion before we make any money," explains Molinaroli of Johnson Controls, which has created a joint venture with Saft, a French company that manufactures and sells lithium-ion batteries to the U.S. military for a variety of high-end uses.

To build its technology base, Johnson Controls has been learning how to duplicate the French company's battery design for manufacture here. "There has been no requirement for innovation in the U.S. because, up to this point, there hasn't really been a need," explained Molinaroli. But now there is, and he expects a decade-long scramble to find the right chemistry for a cheap, stable and effective lithium-ion battery.

"By 2010, there will be a battery and a car, but it won't be the same battery you'll be getting five to 10 years from now," he pointed out. Johnson Controls sees at least five competitors in the United States and five more overseas, and Molinaroli hopes his industry will get more support from the new administration.

"I'm not wild about big government, but if this is a strategic issue for the U.S., it doesn't necessarily show up in the pace at which things are moving," explained Molinaroli. Japan and South Korea are providing more government support to their battery industries than the United States is, he noted.

German and Chinese automakers buying batteries made in Wis.

But at the moment, this race is entering what amounts to the back stretch. As the jockeying for position begins, Johnson Controls appears to be holding its own. It and Saft will be supplying lithium-ion batteries for hybrids being developed by Mercedes-Benz and BMW. SAIC Motor Corp. Ltd., China's leading carmaker, wants the Johnson Controls-Saft batteries for a fleet of demonstration vehicles it is building.

The company's chief U.S. competitor appears to be a newcomer to the auto battery business: A123Systems, of Watertown, Mass. The company was founded in 2001 by Yet-Ming Chiang, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A123 has developed a line of lithium-ion batteries for power tools and enjoys the financial backing of General Electric Co. Last year, it signed a contract with General Motors Corp. to develop a lithium-ion battery for the Chevrolet Volt, which is due in showrooms in 2010.

Spokesmen for A123 said they can't comment on the current state of play because the company has applied to the Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering of its stock. Under SEC rules, the company must enter a "quiet period" during which it can't talk about its future products.

Sizing up his company's future global competition, Johnson Controls' Molinaroli keeps a close watch on China. The still-finicky lithium-ion auto batteries will have to be made in quantity to get their cost down, yet their quality must be kept uniformly high for safety reasons. "There will be a big demand for these batteries in China," he added, "which means there will probably be some battery manufacturers emerging that we don't even know about now."

Gauging how fast China will develop its own lithium-ion technology, he said, is difficult. "But when things do happen over there, they can move in a big way."

This article is reproduced with kind permission of E&E Publishing, LLC.
For more daily news and articles, please visit the ClimateWire website
or subscribe to Greenwire's E-mail Alerts.