New Lithium-ion Batteries from Toshiba

Toshiba to ship new rechargeable battery

"Toshiba Corp.'s Super Charge ion Battery (SCiB), to start shipping in March, can recharge to 90 percent of its full capacity in less than five minutes."

"The new battery will first be used in electric bicycles, motorcycles, forklifts and construction machinery. It can work in temperatures as low as minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit."

90 percent full in less than five minutes. That's impressive. That's accomplished from a 50 amp circuit (not your standard household outlet). They are also only recharging a 24V battery. Will that still be possible for a forklift battery? Our company has an electric forklift that requires a very industrial sized outlet to recharge it. Recharging is done overnight. Fast charging is not a necessity for us. However we have run the thing dead more than once because someone forgot to plug it in at night.

If this can scale up for mass produced EV battereis then there might be a use for all those gas stations once gasoline becomes scarce. They can become rapid charge stations. Of course if you can slowly recharge at home overnight then the bulk of gas stations will have to find something else to do if they are to remain viable businesses. Maybe then can become bicycle storage and repair shops?

The press release does not mention what materials are being used in the battery so it remains a question of how sustainable these batteries will be if they are mass produced (or even if they can be mass produced). They also fail to mention if the batteries can eventually be recycled or safely disposed of. The devil is always in the details.

The SCiB could actually beat Tesla's roadster to market. If Toshiba has at least as good a product as Tesla then Tesla could eventually be left at the side of the road. The real payoff for Tesla would be licensing it's technologies to the big automakers. How long before the SCiB can be adapted to power a vehicle still in an unanswered question but I think it is now going to be a race between Tesla and Toshiba. Of course they aren't the only two companies in the race, just two of the more visible ones.

Notice that electric bicycles are mentioned first in the quote above. Now how much is one of these things going to cost? Doesn't matter much to me because I'm happy to keep pedaling for now. But once the knees go, I hope there's a battery that will do the job.

Next Generation Hybrids

The Tesla Roadster is due to be hitting the streets sometime next year. The Tesla is a high performance electric vehicle. It will be produced on a limited scale and mainly for the California market so don't expect to see one on the road anytime soon. However the Tesla may mark an important way sign on the road towards sustainable personal transportation. The Tesla sells for over $100,000 so it may appear an odd poster child for sustainability. However Tesla Motors' list of customers who will receive the first production models will undoubtedly include many high profile personalities. I'd be surprised if Jay Leno isn't on that list as well as many eco-aware celebrities. There may be some good deals on used Prius's in Hollywood next year as they are traded-in for the new Tesla. Just as the image of Arnold Schwarzenegger driving around in his Hummer ignited the market for super-huge SUV's, the introduction of the Tesla has the potential to do the same for the electric vehicle.


The are still many hurdles to making electric vehicles on the scale that conventional vehicles are produced. Unlike existing hybrids on the road today, the Tesla will use a Lithium ion battery as the main power plant. Lithium Ion batteries are expensive. While this additional cost is of little consequence to a Tesla buyer, the cost of a lithium ion battery large enough to power an average vehicle would drive up the cost considerably. The production of the Tesla has met with many delays including dealing with the challenges of using such a large lithium-ion battery. However if Tesla can overcome these challenges then that shouldn't slow down the introduction of other relatively less expensive electric vehicles. One of the stumbling blocks to wide scale use of lithium-ion batteries is cobalt. Cobalt is a relatively scarce material used in lithium-ion batteries. Scaling up production of electric vehicles would be problematic if it has to rely on cobalt for it batteries. But battery technologies have consistently improved and there are promising developments showing that lithium ion batteries can be made without cobalt.

You might be wondering why a dedicated pedal pusher would be interested in promoting any type of vehicle that isn't human powered. As fossil fuels become scarce and prohibitively expensive, people will slowly turn to whatever alternatives are available. I believe that ultimately, pedal powered vehicles will form a significant part of the available alternatives. If lightweight, reuseable inexpensive batteries are available as fossil fuel production starts to plumment, then velomobiles that can be powered by human pedal power as well as electric drives could become the preferred vehicle for local trips. The logic of moving around a couple of tons of metal will become increasingly hard to defend regardless of the source of the energy used to move it.

So when Jay Leno takes delivery of his latest $100,000 toy you can take some comfort that he is helping to ignite a revolution in personal transportation.

velomobility