A while back I mentioned some new tech involving batteries built of aluminium. While I have nothing new on that, there’s an old tech battery, built in, ah, China, that may be a competitor for lithium ion batteries:
If you bought an EV with a lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery, you could expect lower car payments, less fire risk and more years of use out of your car — but you wouldn’t be able to go as far on a single charge as you could with the nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) batteries commonly found in American and European electric cars. That trade-off has made LFP batteries the go-to choice for standard-range EVs in China, helping to make electric cars more affordable and limit pollution.
Now, American companies are starting to build their own LFP batteries to catch up to their Chinese rivals.
“I definitely suspect that there will be some homegrown LFP chemistries in the next couple years, and we’ll start to see it … grow quite rapidly over the next five to 10 years,” said Scott Moura, an environmental engineering professor at the University of California at Berkeley. [WaPo]
Lower range, but better for the environment, according to the article. That’s halfway there.
