Two quick notes on things that happened this week. The first represents the present; the second (hopefully) the future.
Chevy Volt pricing:
Its $41,000. No surprise there. There is a tax rebate that gets this down to $33,500. The leasing option seems cheaper, but seems limited to 12,000 miles a year. I drive 18,000 a year and I rent (which means no charging at home for me). I will not be in line for one anytime soon.
The Nissan Leaf is $33,000 before rebates and $25,500 after. This seems so much more manageable, but its only a 100 miles range. You win some, you lose some. What we need is a cheaper battery.
Which leads me to�
A discussion of the future of the battery:
Those who follow this blog know that most of us at LBNL work as part of a large program called the Batteries For Advanced Transportation Technologies. The Program is funded by the US DOE and has researchers from all over North America. It�s the top battery people from Universities, National Labs, and companies. The team reads like the who�s who of the battery world. The goal of the Program is to perform the research needed to discover and make the next-generation batteries.
This week on Tuesday, all of us met for a day at LBNL to discuss the future of batteries. We discussed ways to make higher energy, lower-cost materials, methods to make the battery last longer, and the challenges with moving to new batteries that promise significantly higher energy density compared to today�s batteries. Below is a photograph that we took at lunch.
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