Lithium News

It looks like the RED Hydrogen One phone – the one with the holographic display for glasses-free holographic video – is gearing up for release. The smartphone has been approved by the FCC, which is typically a sign of an imminent outing.

But FCC filings don’t just give us warning that the wait is over: they often betray key specs not yet revealed through official channels, and that’s what’s happened with the Hydrogen One phone.

Phonescoop noticed a handful of details about the handset buried away in the filing: it looks like it’ll have four cameras (two on the front, two on the back), dual SIM trays, NFC and – most interestingly of all – a 4,510mAh battery.

If you don’t know phone batteries inside out, that’s on the larger end of the spectrum. The average phone comes with a 3,000-3,500mAh battery, and while we have seen some exceptions (the massive 5,100mAh battery in the Lenovo P2 springs to mind), this is still unusual, which should spell good things for the Hydrogen One’s stamina.

It’s everything the battery’s powering that’s really interesting, though. The reason RED isn’t exactly a household name in the smartphone space is that its main stomping ground is high-end Hollywood cameras, and the firm believes the Hydrogen One’s holographic screen is going to set it apart.

This display, the company says, will allow phone owners to enjoy 2D content, as well as glasses-free 3D movies and “holographic RED Hydrogen 4-view” content.

It’s also modular, in an age where modular phones – handsets you can add bits onto like the Moto Z2 Play, LG G5 and Google’s theoretical Project Ara – have largely gone the way of the dodo.

Two modules have been revealed so far: a battery pack and a cinema-grade camera module for recording 2D video in RED’s R3 file format.

Until we see all these features in action, it’s hard to say if the Hydrogen One will be worth the price – but it’s set to be pricey. Pre-orders are no longer open, but when they were, prices were set at $1,295 (around £994) for the phone in aluminium, or $1,595 (£1,224) in titanium.

Panasonic, Tesla’s exclusive battery cell supplier for electric vehicles, is planning to increase battery cell production by 30% by the end of the year at Tesla Gigafactory 1.

The company says that ‘production at Tesla is gaining momentum’ and it needs to make sure not to become a bottleneck in the Model 3 production.

The Japanese electronics giant is the sole battery cell supplier for Tesla’s vehicles. It manufactures custom 18650 li-ion cells in Japan for Tesla’s Model S and Model X vehicles. The Model 3 cells are custom 2170 li-ion cells co-developed with Tesla and manufactured by Panasonic at Gigafactory 1.

Earlier this year, Panasonic said it was open to increasing its investment in the factory.

Tesla Gigafactory 1, which started in 2013, has already grown into the biggest battery factory in the world with an annual production capacity of over 20 GWh.

But they need to more than double that over the next year alone in order to support Tesla’s ambitions.

Now Japanese media Nikkan is reporting that Panasonic is planning to increase its battery cell production capacity by 30% at the plant by the end of the year with three new production lines for a total of 13.

Panasonic Chief Financial Officer Hirokazu Umeda confirmed that production has gained momentum and they expect it to start being profitable by the end of the year:

“Production at Tesla is gaining momentum. We are ramping up a new (battery production) line now and expect the business to contribute not just to our revenue but also to our profit from the second half (starting in October).”

Interestingly, that’s also when Tesla plans for the Model 3 program to turn a profit.

Panasonic aims to bring the total battery cell production capacity to 35 GWh by the end of the year.

The current structure has a 1.9 million square-foot footprint. Including several levels, the factory currently has about 4.9 million square feet of operational space. This represents only ~30 percent of the planned completed Gigafactory, according to Tesla.

At 35 GWh, it would be producing at the originally announced production rate, but Tesla has since increased the planned total capacity to 105 GWh of battery cells and 150 GWh of total battery pack output.

The increase in capacity by the end of the year would support close to 10,000 Model 3 vehicles per week on its own – though Tesla doesn’t plan to achieve that until next year.

Panasonic’s battery cell production was never thought to be a bottleneck in Tesla’s Model 3 production until last month when CEO Yoshio Ito said that the recent Tesla Model 3’s production ramp is creating ‘occasional battery cell shortages’.

It looks like Panasonic is now making some adjustments to make sure it doesn’t happen during the second half of Tesla’s ramp up.

Volkswagen is eyeing producing its own solid state battery cells, with possible serial production from 2024 or 2025, its chief executive said on Wednesday.

“We must not make ourselves dependent on a few Asian manufacturers in the long term,” VW CEO Herbert Diess said after the group reported second-quarter results.

He said advances in ceramic separators had raised the viability of mass production of solid state batteries.

A solid state battery factory would likely be in Europe, or even in Germany under the right conditions, Diess said.

Battery cells are a key battleground in the automotive industry as it shifts to electric mobility.

Currently the industry sources its requirements from Asian manufacturers such as CATL, which plans to build its first European production site in Germany.

The battery and solar project will be located in the mountainous state of Himachal Pradesh, facing huge temperature variations. Flickr: Simon

Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) has issued a tender for EPC of a grid-connected 2MWac solar PV project linked with 1MW / 1MWh of battery energy storage on government land at Kaza, in the mountainous state of Himachal Pradesh.

The notice of issue (NIT) was released on behalf of Himachal Renewable Limited, a JV between SECI – which was itself established by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) – and Himachal Pradesh State Electricity Board (HPSEBL).

The tender is for design, engineering, supply, construction, erection, testing, commissioning including five of O&M services of the plants at the town of Kaza, which is the subdivisional headquarters of the remote Spiti Valley in the Lahaul and Spiti district.

The battery will be located at Rangreek, near Rong Tong Hydro Power Station, 12,000 feet in altitude, facing annual temperature ranges of -40°C to 30°C. The area can see snow of up to six feet in winter months.

The tender noted that the battery “shall be designed for maximum flexibility with regard to site-specific voltages, frequency, phase imbalance, and protection requirements”.

Any battery technology can be used as long it is deemed suitable for the location’s climatic conditions. The batteries will also be containerised.

There was good news for energy storage in India recently with the reduction of the Goods and Service Tax (GST) on lithium-ion batteries.

SECI also recently issued a tender for two 1.5MW(AC) solar power projects with battery energy storage systems of 0.75MW / 2.5MWh each at two locations in the state of Jammu and Kashmir.

Waiting for your cell phone to charge may soon be a thing of the past.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge have identified a group of materials that could be used to make even higher power batteries that can charge within a matter of minutes.

The researchers used materials with a complex crystalline structure and found that lithium ions move through them at rates that far exceed those of typical electrode materials, which equates to a much faster-charging battery.

Although these materials, known as niobium tungsten oxides, do not result in higher energy densities when used under typical cycling rates, they come into their own for fast-charging applications. Additionally, their physical structure and chemical behavior give researchers a valuable insight into how a safe, super-fast charging battery could be constructed, and suggest that the solution to next-generation batteries may come from unconventional materials.

“We’re always looking for materials with high-rate battery performance, which would result in a much faster charge and could also deliver high power output,” said Dr Kent Griffith, a researcher in Cambridge’s Department of Chemistry and the paper’s first author.

In their simplest form, batteries are made of three components: a positive electrode, a negative electrode and an electrolyte. When a battery is charging, lithium ions are extracted from the positive electrode and move through the crystal structure to the negative electrode, where they are stored. The faster this process occurs, the faster the battery can be charged.

In the search for new electrode materials, researchers normally try to make the particles smaller.

“The idea is that if you make the distance the lithium ions have to travel shorter, it should give you higher rate performance,” said Griffith. “But it’s difficult to make a practical battery with nanoparticles: you get a lot more unwanted chemical reactions with the electrolyte, so the battery doesn’t last as long, plus it’s expensive to make.”

“Nanoparticles can be tricky to make, which is why we’re searching for materials that inherently have the properties we’re looking for even when they are used as comparatively large micron-sized particles. This means that you don’t have to go through a complicated process to make them, which keeps costs low,” said Professor Clare Grey, also from the Department of Chemistry and the paper’s senior author. “Nanoparticles are also challenging to work with on a practical level, as they tend to be quite ‘fluffy’, so it’s difficult to pack them tightly together, which is key for a battery’s volumetric energy density.”

The new oxides used in the current work have a rigid, open structure that does not trap the inserted lithium, and have larger particle sizes than many other electrode materials. Griffith speculates that the reason these materials have not received attention previously is related to their complex atomic arrangements. However, he suggests that the structural complexity and mixed-metal composition are the very reasons the materials exhibit unique transport properties.

“Many battery materials are based on the same two or three crystal structures, but these niobium tungsten oxides are fundamentally different,” said Griffith. The oxides are held open by ‘pillars’ of oxygen, which enables lithium ions to move through them in three dimensions. “The oxygen pillars, or shear planes, make these materials more rigid than other battery compounds, so that, plus their open structures means that more lithium ions can move through them, and far more quickly.”

The researchers measured the movement of lithium ions through the oxides, and found that they moved at rates several orders of magnitude higher than typical electrode materials.

Most negative electrodes in current lithium-ion batteries are made of graphite, which has a high energy density, but when charged at high rates, tends to form spindly lithium metal fibers, which can create a short-circuit and cause the batteries to catch fire and possibly explode.

“In high-rate applications, safety is a bigger concern than under any other operating circumstances,” said Grey. “These materials, and potentially others like them, would definitely be worth looking at for fast-charging applications where you need a safer alternative to graphite.”

In addition to their high lithium transport rates, the new oxides are also simple to make.

While the oxides may only be suited for certain applications, Grey says that the important thing is to keep looking for new chemistries and new materials. “Fields stagnate if you don’t keep looking for new compounds,” she says. “These interesting materials give us a good insight into how we might design higher rate electrode materials.”

Panasonic Corp on Tuesday said it expects its battery business with U.S. electric vehicle maker Tesla to contribute to profit from the second half of its business year, as production of mass-market Model 3 cars picks up pace.

The Japanese firm is the exclusive battery cell supplier for new vehicles made by Tesla, which in June reached a long-elusive target of making 5,000 Model 3 cars per week, albeit amid concern about whether it could sustain that level of production.

“Production at Tesla is gaining momentum,” Panasonic Chief Financial Officer Hirokazu Umeda said at a briefing. “We are ramping up a new (battery production) line now and expect the business to contribute not just to our revenue but also to our profit from the second half (starting in October).”

Panasonic’s energy business – most of which is batteries of various kinds – posted an operating loss for April-June which widened about five times to 8.4 billion yen ($75.34 million), mostly due to costs of raising production at the so-called Gigafactory it runs with Tesla.

Due to strong demand for factory automation equipment, however, Panasonic’s first-quarter operating profit rose 19 percent from a year prior to 99.96 billion yen – roughly in line with the average of seven analyst estimates compiled by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

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Panasonic’s share price has been on a downward trend this year as investors worry the firm’s $1.6 billion Gigafactory bet has made it reliant on Tesla.

Last week, the U.S. electric vehicle maker said it had asked a small number of suppliers to cut prices on ongoing, long-term projects to improve its future cash flow. Umeda on Tuesday said Panasonic did not receive any such request.

“For the past two years, Panasonic has spent on capex and R&D without being able to record revenues against those costs,” analysts at Jefferies said in a recent client report.

“By the end of this financial year, as Model 3 production run-rate becomes stable and sustainable, it (Panasonic) should be able to record profits in its Tesla battery business.”

Panasonic maintained its profit forecast for the year through March at 425 billion yen, 2 percent below the average of 21 analyst estimates.