The Battery Debate

Is battery technology ramping up to become the future automotive fuel of choice, or is there another solution?

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You've all seen them. Smug hybrid drivers whizzing by you in the carpool lane, passing up the gas pump, and smiling pityingly at you as you fill up your not-that-fuel-inefficient sub-compact. Is battery technology really the wave of the future for the automobile industry? Or are we just victims of clever marketing and shiny, eco-green paint jobs.

KPCB's Ray Lane is optimistic, saying that the industry is seeing great power and energy density in today's fuel batteries. The strides made in battery technology, he says, will produce some real, valid options for current vehicle powertrains in the next two years.

Steve Westly wonders if battery technology isn't entering a Moore's Law type of technology ramp-up. Will batteries become exponentially less-expensive, lighter, longer-lasting, and better performing? Undoubtedly, batteries absolutely become less-expensive in volume, which has already been proven over the last couple of decades.

Venture Vehicles Howard Levine acknowledges that constraints outside technology development are the biggest danger to battery advancement. "Currently, the market is pretty much stuck at $1,000 per kilowatt hour." The main ingredient, lithium, is a commodity, that has to be mined, shipped, processed.... Future supply constraints in lithium supply could be a limiting factor in battery production and technology advancement.

Transonic Combustion's Mike Cheiky believes that batteries are not necessarily the way to go. No only are the material supplies potentially constrained, but producing batteries is extremely hazardous and rife with other issues.

He says: "We could make dramatic improvements in reducing the extreme ramp-up of CO2 in the world ... if we put just half as much effort into making internal combustion engines and fuel-injector systems work as we are in batteries and fuel ...

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News & Politics

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• cars
• electric
• kpcb
• lane
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